Portland, Oregon – reporting from the War Zone and Woke Utopia

President Trump says that Portland is at war.

I think that’s hyperbole.

Where I’m staying, in Chinatown, it looks like the war is over, and what we’re left with are the heavily traumatized people wandering through the rubble like zombies. 

I get into Portland, Oregon, on Monday evening after a day of flights from New York.

The homeless scene down here is dismal as I walk to my hotel. The people next to tents on the sidewalks are smoking weed, and other things, in various states of semi-consciousness.

A fair number of them just start screaming for no apparent reason.

An older bald guy is standing shirtless in the middle of the street outside the only open market, in a pose that looks like he’s about to start dancing. He’s apparently catatonic, just frozen there.

Another guy in a black hoodie is carrying two crutches. He decides to jaywalk in front of a bus – the bus screeches to a halt, and black hoodie turns to the driver, flips him off, and screams FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!

Welcome to Portland, the woke utopia

Portland tried decriminalizing hard drugs in 2020.

Remember 2020? It was peak woke insanity, plus healthcare-themed dystopia. And it seems to me like they’re clinging onto the ragged ghost of 2020 five years later, in Portland.

Surgical masks are still a popular fashion statement around here. Some businesses still have covid-themed signs on their doors. The rest of us moved on long ago.

Personally, 2020 is what made me lose my faith in around half of humanity.

I’ve even mentally composed an article about that, and some day I’ll write it – not today. Anyway, after the extremely liberal Oregon electorate voted to decriminalize hard drugs, they all watched as homicide, homelessness, and overdose deaths spiked over the next few years.

Oops! Who could have ever predicted that? 

Eventually they walked the whole thing back. In late 2024, Oregon governor Tina Kotek signed an order re-criminalizing hard drugs.

In an interview several months ago with the New York Times, then-mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland blames a botched roll-out for the failure of the plan. He now says that a better idea would have been to build up the mental health services first, and then legalize drugs.

All this to say, perhaps the situation downtown, bad as it is, is actually an improvement over last year. Or maybe it’s just what the people of Portland want.

I don’t know. I have some experience with addiction, but no experience whatsoever with hard drugs, and I’m not going to claim to be a public policy genius.

I guess the whole problem – the constellation of drugs, homelessness, crime, and mental health – is pretty complicated. 

Whopper inflation and fentanyl

But I’m not in Portland to do anthropology. I’m here to see my dad.

On the other end of downtown, my dad lets me in, and immediately starts talking about inflation.

“Have you seen what they’re doing to the currency?”

I didn’t use to worry about things like that, but in the past few years I’ve become one of those people. “In my day, a hamburger cost a nickel!” and so on.

I don’t remember when a hamburger cost a nickel, but I do remember the 99 cent Whopper at Burger King. Now, according to Google’s AI, a Whopper costs almost $11. The official inflation since 1999 is only about 95%. But Whopper inflation is over 1000%. Make of that what you will.

Also, the Chevron station outside my hotel window lists gas at $4.99 a gallon. That’s about 4x what I was paying when I started driving at the end of the 90s.

My dad isn’t some Portland scenester. But he collects aluminum cans for a lady in his building to return for the deposit. “That’s how the economy of downtown Portland works.” he says. “Ten cans gets you a dollar, and a dollar gets you some fentanyl.”

I don’t initially believe that fentanyl costs a dollar, but it does – at least according to the internet. I guess not everything is going up in price.

We do the New York Times crossword puzzle together, my dad and I, on his big desktop computer. If memory serves, we finish it in 18 minutes and 53 seconds. 

Pacific Northwest Lifestyles

Later, I head up to Washington Park.

The trees are incredible, everything I’ve ever wanted in a tree. There’s a Sacagawea monument (she’s pointing off into the distance with a baby on her back) and then a Lewis and Clark column up on the top of the hill.

Lewis and Clark, of course, walked through this area in 1805, following the Columbia River down to the Pacific. From the hilltoptop monument, you can see a bit of the city, and forested hills rolling off into the distance. 

From there, I walk up 23rd Ave, a beautiful street lined with cafés, shops and restaurants, with maple trees all along the way turning orange and yellow for autumn.

This area is called Nob Hill. I stop at Henry Higgins Boiled Bagels and have a Rachel – pastrami, cheese and coleslaw on a poppy seed bagel. All the shops are the kind of high-end outdoor gear I love.

It’s really nice out here. Also, the drug addicts and crazies are nowhere to be seen.

In a parallel universe, I might have ended up here, wearing 200 dollar flannels and Doc Martens, and just spend my life sipping espresso in some café on 23rd Ave.

When people ask me why I don’t want to live in the US, I don’t have a great answer. Life in Spain is pretty good. Where I really don’t want to live is Arizona, where I grew up.

Maybe if I had been in a place like this, things would have been different.

How to relax in a weed-smoker’s paradise

After I’ve left my dad I feel the need to decompress.

I usually do this by spending time at the gym. But having no gym to go to in Portland, and after some soul searching, I head to one of the newfangled weed dispensaries.

A busty young lady with spiderweb tattoos tells me to flash my ID so the camera will see her looking at it, then asks me if I’d like something more uplifting, or…

I don’t even let her finish. “Uplifting sounds great, thanks.”

I pay $4.44 for a pre-rolled joint of what I take to be some lightweight stuff. I stopped drinking two and a half years ago and haven’t tried anything but strong coffee since.

Walking back towards my hotel, I sit and take about 5 hits out in the public park – a class B felony, as it turns out. (I figure I’m protected by the fact that there are 20 other people in this section of park who are also doing drugs.)

At first, I feel nothing, so I sort of give up. Maybe I’ll go by Whole Foods, and spend the evening drowning my sorrows in expensive kombucha. I walk a few blocks, and soon discover that I’m having trouble stepping from the sidewalk down into the street.

Oh. Fun. My legs are not fully under my control, and simple things like a sign saying “11th Ave and Washington” are beyond my mental grasp. I look around, puzzled, and somehow make it back using the GPS, retracing my steps several times when I get lost.

At the hotel I have quite an experience listening to Mike Doughty’s Haughty Melodic on my earbuds and being able to pick out every note and scratch of the guitar strings. It’s interesting for about three songs. Sunken-Eyed Girl, a song about love and addiction, seems to fit today’s mood pretty well.

But after an hour I’m just bored with being high. I’m bored with being high, in fact, for about two more hours, at which point I decide to go out for some dinner.

I end up at a nearby Latin fusion place called Que Dice, where I eat half of my chicken katsu with mac salad and want to puke. 

Then I go back to lie in bed with my heart racing, regretting my recent life choices.

Finding humor in the mundane

The next day I get up at 5:30, as usual, and decide over my first coffee that I really need a workout. Using what I have at hand, which is nothing, I go down to the river and do sprints on the grass. I feel 20 times better, afterwards.

Don’t do drugs, kids. Just do cardio.

Cafe Umbria on Broadway is where the beautiful people stop for refreshment. Beautiful for Portland, I should say, which means that nobody is dressed like an out-of-work circus clown and everyone seems to belong to one of the two legacy genders… the ones we grew up with. 

I get a massively expensive cold brew and head back to my dad’s place.

Today, my dad wants to go to the tobacco store. This involves talking the light rail several stops towards Pioneer Square.

The crowd on Portland light rail is pretty sketchy. One guy onboard is homeless and dragging a cart full of his stuff. He peels a large black-and-white “out of service” sticker off the ticket swipe machine and sticks it to his forehead before stepping off the train. 

The tobacco store has a cigar bar inside. It’s bigger than many Spanish supermarkets. Also, a wooden Indian, feather headdress and all. My dad buys tobacco: 8 oz of Danish and two packs of Bugler cigarette papers. No filters.

After the tobacco store we go to some sports bar for lunch. They have TVs everywhere. My dad asks me why I can’t seem to stop laughing. I tell him it’s the absurdity of American broadcast television. 

In reality, Morena comments on my laughing, too. I think I just find humor in the everyday.

Also, I haven’t owned a TV in decades, or really watched one, so this is a novel experience for me. I order the Philly fries: steak, mushrooms and cheese on a bed of crispy potatoes. My dad orders the tacos. Carnitas. 

Over his shoulder, some female commentators on ESPN 2 are evaluating the outfits of various WNBA stars heading into Game 3 of the Finals. What this has to do with sports is unclear. But it’s hilarious nonetheless.

WNBA fashion… What a time to be alive!

Homelessness in Downtown Portland

I’m taking some liberties with the chronology of this article…

And don’t worry, I’m getting around to “war zone” and the Antifa protests down at the ICE building as well.

Bear with me.

Time is an illusion anyway. Just ask the strung-out weirdos camping in downtown Portland.

Here’s a guy in his boxer briefs, tennis shoes and a surgical mask – nothing else – carrying a stick. He’s slapping it menacingly against his palm, like he’s contemplating the beating he’s about to give someone. I give him a wide berth on the sidewalk.

Here’s a woman in pyjamas, screaming at the top of her lungs at a parking meter. She screams, then hits the meter a few times, then screams some more.

Here’s the line of addicts waiting outside Saint André Bessette Catholic church for breakfast, each more broken-looking than the last. 

(Saint André Bessette, also known as Saint André of Montreal, was a French Canadian born in 1845, and known for his work with the sick and marginalized.)

On the train there’s a guy shouting “THEY DID IT TO MY FATHER! TO MY FATHER!” He repeats this every few seconds. Every time he says the word “father”, he drags one foot way out behind him, so he’s moving around the train car backwards. I’m not used to this sort of thing, and it makes me nervous.

Everyone else just ignores him. 

It’s worth considering that each one of these people was once something else. At the very least they were obnoxious but largely healthy teenagers, who dreamed of something bigger than a tent pitched on the sidewalk of Portland’s dilapidated Chinatown. 

Keep the Feds out of Portland

I ask my dad about the war zone. 

“Oh, this whole thing was started by a guy in a chicken suit down at the ICE building.”

From what I gather, my dad doesn’t want the Feds to get involved in the situation here in Portland. They just escalate the violence, he says. 

I tend to agree. I’d like government to be more local in general. Locally elected officials might care more about the day-to-day problems of people in their area. 

On the other hand, it seems that in practice, a lot of city mayors are now playing at global geopolitics, and ignoring the actual running of their cities in favor of loud partisan pandering.

I guess that’s natural, in a way. But I don’t like it. 

A politician’s job is to get elected, then to get re-elected. And I assume all of them are hoping to move up, and someday be elected to something bigger. Why get bogged down with the minutiae of improving your city’s public transport system when you could use your four years in the spotlight to position yourself for a run for state Governor, or maybe even President?

In that light, I’m sure that Trump calling your city a war zone is probably the best thing that could happen to the career of someone like new Portland mayor Keith Wilson.

Global media exposure for a city of less than a million – it’s like a dream come true!

(Ted Wheeler, who was mayor during all the chaos from 2017 to 2024, decided not to seek a third term.)

The Portland War Zone

The ICE building – center of the Portland war zone – is in the South Waterfront neighborhood.

I take the light rail down to see what all the fuss is about.

When I arrive, it’s late afternoon. There are about a dozen protesters, and almost as many reporters. A fat guy on the far corner is yelling at the cops as I walk up… he seems to be criticizing their mismatched uniforms.

A half dozen cops, indeed, are standing on a ledge of the ICE building, overlooking the street. Two of them have what are probably the guns that shoot rubber bullets – or maybe pepper balls. They’re wearing balaclavas and tactical gear, and the effect is menacing. Cars go by, honking, which the dozen protestors take as being validation for their cause.

It’s not clicktivism, it’s honktivism. 

“They ain’t gonna like seeing a bunch of fucking brown dudes standing here.” 

The guy who says that appears to be Native American. He’s got face tattoos and a metal spike through the flap of cartilage on the bottom of his nose. I don’t actually see a bunch of brown dudes. Maybe two. But soon, someone rolls up on an electric bike with a Mexican flag flying off the back of it.

Okay, that’s three, assuming the guy on the bike identifies as “brown”.

Two teenage girls come by and flip off the cops on the roof. Other than the occasional honking the scene is pretty subdued. 

The guy in the chicken suit is here. My dad had told me there would be a guy in a chicken suit.

He’s got a couple of furry friends with him. One is probably Tony the Tiger and the other is a long-eared puppy, or maybe a short-eared rabbit.

One of the teenage girls has thrown away her Starbucks cup and crossed the street to scream “FUCK YOU BITCHES!” up at the cops. The guy right next to me, who’s brought a chair because he’s too fat to stand up, mumbles something about a police state.

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave

Since you’ve asked, I’d like to propose an alternative Freedom Index in which teenage girls go from country to country, screaming “fuck you bitches” – or its foreign-language equivalent – at uniformed law enforcement. Then they could rate on a 0 to 100 scale the severity of the police response.

I’m guessing they’d find that the US isn’t quite the awful, repressive police state that people now assume, here at the anti-ICE protest.

(If you have to drive across town after school to find cops to yell at, are you really that oppressed? Or are you just spoiled and lacking other hobbies?)

After half an hour, about 20 military march out to block the intersection so two cars can drive into the ICE compound. People shout at the cars. “Losers!” I guess it takes one to know one.

 A single counterprotestor shows up. He’s got a bullhorn, a big US flag and a t-shirt that says I support ICE. 

“Trump freed Gaza!” he shouts. “FUCK YOU ANTIFA BITCHES!” Things get a bit intense as a skinny guy who’s wearing a Palestinian flag as a cape starts shouting back through his own, smaller bullhorn. 

These antifa people really need to work on their fashion and hygiene … I feel uncomfortably overdressed, out here, and over-groomed as well.

Final notes from war-torn Portland

I like to give full disclosure about my own personal biases in these articles, so here goes. 

Full disclosure: I used to hang out with some Antifa-type people when I was much younger, and I eventually discovered that they’re assholes.

Here’s why: when I decided I was going escape from minimum-wage drudgery and do something with my life, they all told me that “doing something” was a bad idea, because the system is unfair, and that all I was doing was benefiting from the patriarchy and/or white privilege.

After that, when I did it anyway, they denounced me as a sellout and a petit-bourgeois and stopped calling me.

So I’m not exactly neutral on the topic. These people are the crabs in the bucket, dragging everyone around them back down to their miserable, pathetic, unhygienic level.

Here’s my opinion, then: Portland isn’t a war zone. And nobody’s fighting fascism, either.

We’re not going to have Civil War 2.0… and everybody needs to calm down.

The struggle against fascism is a comforting fantasy for people hiding behind their iPhone keypads, in their jammy-jams, while waiting for the Doordash guy to bring them breakfast. But it’s not real.

Everyone I disagree with is a Nazi

People on both sides love pretending like they’re at war against unspeakable evil. Really, y’all just spend too much time online, where expressing the most insane political opinions will get you more likes than something boring like “let’s just calm down”.

“Everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi. A literal, triple-fascist Nazi.”

Ok bro. Sorry about that.

I get some dinner at Little Big Burger – it’s okay – and then circle back to the protest. Now there are three large frog suits and a guy dressed as Batman. So now probably four dozen protesters.

A reporter from Univision is talking to a camera, messing up his lines, starting again. After three takes he says “creo que está bien”. He and his cameraman pack up and leave.

It would be easier to take this thing seriously if half the people weren’t furries. But the animal costumes are multiplying. There’s now a raccoon, a unicorn, and a polar bear. What there isn’t, is any sort of mass movement.

Or war zone.

Have a good one, y’all.

Yours,

Daniel AKA Mr Chorizo.

P.S. I have expressed on here before my strong opinion that it’s really really easy to stand around complaining, and actually a lot harder to create something of your own. But all good things in our society were created by someone who was able to stop complaining, at least briefly, and do something useful. That’s my main problem with the Antifas I knew, back in the day – they’d do anything to justify protesting and complaining, but didn’t believe in actually creating something positive. What do you think? Hit me up, right here in the comments…