In most U.S. cities I am familiar with, the downtown core is a sore spot, one that’s been haphazardly neglected and then rescued and “improved” in various ways and according to various plans. In Saint Louis, for example, efforts to “revitalize” downtown have been underway under various logos for as long as I’ve been alive. I just turned 45, and downtown Saint Louis remains a cluster of office towers shadowed by the Arch and surrounded by blight. It’s occupied by day, but at 5:00 sharp each evening, it’s car-by-car exodus time.
Portland was quite different. In 1994, it struck me as kind of New York-ish in that downtown was a place where people lived and worked. I used to work for a law firm in one of the bank towers downtown, and every now and then a group of us would go out for drinks after work, and I remember being shocked, when the time came to get on my bike and ride home, at the sight of people on the streets and sidewalks long after closing time at the offices.
There were bars and restaurants and cafes and bookstores and record stores. There was a shopping mall that managed somehow to not look or feel quite like a mall. There were department stores and a public square where people sat on the brick steps and smoked cigarettes and watched the youngsters play hacky sack. There were light-rail trains and buses and cars and lots and lots of people on bikes. People were forever coming and going, as I recall. The sun would head down for the day, the sky would turn a serious shade of deep blue and the evenings would gradually, respectfully take up where the afternoon had left off. At all hours of the day and night, heading either into or out of downtown Portland, I rode my bicycle across the Hawthorne Bridge – which was the color of copper back then – sharing the narrow strip of concrete, in the days before designated bike paths, with people on skateboards and on foot and other bicyclists, with downtown always in the foreground or the background, and I remember, clearly, thinking: Man, this is the place to live.
I think it’s kind of shitty down there these days, but I cannot decide if my perception is based on actual shifts and changes or if it’s just that I’m older now and nostalgic for my own history.
But there are other factors. Businesses – ignoring the brutally honest example of places like Saint Louis – have moved to hideous office parks in the suburbs. The like-moneyed have set up their own city in a place called the Pearl District that, in my opinion, gives the hideousness of the suburbs a run for its money. There are empty storefronts and empty sidewalks. One thing I’ve noticed is that it’s not unusual for a space formerly occupied by a local merchant to have been transformed into a store where you buy not cell phones but cell phone plans. Liquor stores used to be considered the harbinger of urban blight. Have they been replaced in the lore of urban planning by the purveyors of cell phone plans?
Not surprisingly, the people are different as well. I remember people downtown being friendly, smiling and nodding and saying hello as we passed each other on the sidewalks. I remember people waiting for the Walk signal even if there weren’t any cars coming. I remember people waiting to reach a corner before crossing the street. I remember buses within downtown being free. And I remember people paying attention not to their cell phones and their iPods but, it seems to me, to where they were, to those who were there with them and to where they were going. If this doesn’t sound like something an old person would say I don’t know what does, but it seems to me that there was more courtesy in 1994 than there is today, more civility.
But here’s what I really set out to write about: The clipboard activists. While I appreciate the fact that they are earning a living just like the rest of us and while I am respectful of the mission, their tactics make me almost sympathetic to the constantly connected crowd, which takes some doing. The fundraisers make earplugs seem like a good idea. They stand on corners, at a distance from public entrances that are set forth by the city (talk about a bad sign) with their clipboards and game-show smiles and bug the living shit out anyone and everyone – including me – who ventures into their sphere.
And, as you cross the street and approach the side of the street that they’re on – again, as mandated by the city – the attack begins like this: “Hey man, that’s a really nice shirt you’re wearing …” I fell for this the first few times, but after the first few hundred times, I began behaving in a way I’ve always found offensive in others: I glared at them with as much hostility as I could muster. Most people I know don’t answer their phone unless they recognize the digits that pop up on their caller ID. Most people I know don’t answer the door unless they’re expecting someone. Most people I know spend the majority of the time they spend in their e-mail programs not sending or receiving but deleting.
Most people I know are not open to exchanging pleasantries with strangers on downtown sidewalks. And most people has come to include me, because I am not willing to have the time I spend downtown be dominated by fundraising tricks. So when someone compliments the shirt I’m wearing, I glare and keep going. And lately they’ve taken to muttering “karma!” as I pass. Which strikes me as an odd thing to say, given the fact that they’re chipping away, one aborted interaction at a time, at the foundation of one human’s natural inclination to engage in pleasantries with others.
