I'm building a stilt fortress for my kid in the back yard, I started today. I've got 4 20 foot 4x4 in, they look insanely tall. I'll probably wait until Saturday to frame in the floor so the concrete has time to cure. The city has purposed the closure of our neighborhood pool. It's one five indoor pools in the city, and a lovely facility. The city talks a bunch of jive about how the necessary budget cuts are done with an eye toward equity and serving less advantaged communities. The peninsula I live on has one neighborhood with the 2nd highest minority community, a larger amount of households living in poverty than most the city, including Oregon's largest housing project. It's recently been zoned to drastically increase density. At least three schools hold their competitive swimming practices there. Swimming lessons for kids are always full, you have to register the day classes open if you want to get in. The old folks have water aerobics classes there. I was told that yesterday's class had 58 attendees. Lots of people go there to lap swim. In short it's a shitty thing to do to our often underserved collection of neighborhoods. The park department has a 6 million dollar shortfall and our pool needs 200k in roof maintanince. The city wants to increase the police budget by $12 million this year. I've been spreading the word at my shop and encouraging people to call and write city council. Because my wife works in printing we've been able to donate posters and handbills. My mom who's very active in the League of Women's Voters has been leafleting. I attended the city budget meeting last night and people really came out to let the council know what they thought. I'm pretty sure 2 out of five member of the council would be happy to push half of the proposed police budget increase toward parks and rec. There is a fair chance that two other will come around. I had a few things to say about the homeless community today as well but I'm talked out. Generally I'm really coming around to the idea that we all suffer more when we neglect our least advantaged community members than we realize.
your local rag is full of shoot first, ask questions later bleeding-heart psychopaths. If Portland's hippies can lose their shit over a tortilla truck they can sure as hell work up a lather over a swimming pool closure.
Shitting on two white ladies with a burrito cart is "fun" and hip. Getting the city to shift their budget to save the pool in a part of town many people don't even know exists (ask how the city is laid out and people will tell it's divided into four quadrants, I live in the "5th quadrant",) involves taking hours out of your evening to bitch at city council. People in this part of town love their community. We have our own parade and after parade debauch that people get as excited about as your average Midwest town would get about the second coming of Christ (I mean this, people build floats and polish their classic cars for weeks in preparation, adults jump up and down with Glee a week ahead of time). Old timers on the deep end if the peninsula still pretend it's not incoperated. I heard one if them boast that they hadn't been to "the city" in twenty years. We are going to bitch and bitch and bitch and then bitch some more. There are some very fine, savvy and dogged individuals whom I know from neighborhood association meetings and what not, who's names are spoken like a curse in city hall in the fight. I always donate, bring coffee to events and show up here and there but I'm in this one, shit has me pissed. My kid loves the pool, I love the buildings architecture and it touches the health and well-being of a lot of people I know.
I've met people who've lived here for a decade and not known we are up here. Before Google maps people would call business that I worked at for the address and I'd tell the "number street North Portland." They would say I'm sorry is that NE or NW? I'd say, no, it's in North Portland. They would ask "do you mean NE or NW", I'd repeat. They'd be in a huff "ok (dumb fuck) are you on the east or west side of the river"? I'd say that I guess we are on the East side of the river but we are really North of the river. People would show up and say they lived here for ages and didn't know this part of town existed and they were sorry for being an ass on the phone. The best was when I was told that North Portland didn't exist and I was an idiot or an asshole.
New Mexico's experience is relevant here. And now I really wanna explore North Portland!