Iconic Portland Chinatown- Overflowing with Poop

EL PRESIDENTE · Mar 23, 2014

Had this problem in Santa Monica, which has a bad homeless problem. Every once in a while we'd fine a dookie in our parking lot at work.

http://www.vice.com/read/portlands-iconic-old-town-is-overflowing-with-human-shit

A few weeks ago, Lucille McAleese was opening her beloved Kells, an Irish-themed pub and restaurant in Portland’s Old Town Chinatown. Mornings can make or break your day, and that morning, someone took a big shit right in front of Kells’ front door. Lucille’s retching and gagging soon turned to anger, so she called the local news, and camera crews swooped in.

Almost everyone who lives, works, or ventures into Old Town Chinatown has stories of routinely having to avoid stepping in coils of human shit. Lucille says that during the summer she finds poop in the parking lot behind Kells almost every night.

“Cleaning it up is something you can’t ask the staff to do. My husband, Gerard, usually has to do it,” Lucille told me. “When I see it, I want to throw up. It’s a very visceral reaction.”

Flanked by the pseudo-cultured Pearl district to the west, Downtown to the south, and the broad Willamette River to the east, Old Town Chinatown houses some of the most iconic parts of the city.

Whenever tourists visit, most of them need to see the White Stag sign, Union Station, and the remnants of the underground tunnels that were used for Shanghaiing unwitting sailors, according to legend.

Ten years ago, Portland was nothing more than the second-biggest city in the drab Pacific Northwest, but it seems like every day some national publication has it atop some internet click-through best-of list. Many out-of-town visitors I talked to in Old Town said they were shocked by the state of the district. Few imagined that waiting in line for a doughnut, or taking a picture under the neon Portland sign, would mean tiptoeing over turds on skid row.
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It wouldn't be a Vice article if it didn't bash on Bro culture.

A much more glaring problem, he said, is the people who come to Old Town Chinatown on the weekends. Axe-soaked dudes and spray-tanned women file in from outlying suburbs like Gresham, Vancouver, and Beaverton, and pile into the douchey weekend nightclubs. With the weekend crowds come drunken rowdiness, fighting, and arrests.

“I’m way more scared of the Girls Gone Wild fight-and-fuck crowds spilling out of bars now. I avoid going downtown on weekends,” Tres said.

Over the past few years, the weekend Old Town Chinatown crowds have become absurd. The city has even had to start closing off major streets to cars, and extra police swarm in on Friday and Saturday nights to make sure the bros play nicely.

Aside from the debauchery, weekend nights provide a positive glimpse of what skid row could become if more Portlanders lived, worked, or hung out in the area. Maybe then the human dumps on the sidewalks wouldn’t be so glaring.

Tres thinks the vagrants and drug dealers are as much a part of Portland’s iconography as his shop, which is flanked by a porno theater on one side, a titty bar on the other, and Section 8 housing one floor up.

“We don’t want to change anything. This is what Portland always was,” he said. “People think our motto is ‘Keep Portland Weird,’ but we just stole that from Austin. I think it should be ‘Keep Portland Sketchy.’”
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:MARIS61:

jlprk · Mar 23, 2014

No local coverage. Where is Canzano on this story?

Why doesn't she put security cameras in her parking lot. The police could identify each lawbreaker by the size of his ass.

Putting up a couple of blue portable outhouses might be worth her money.

EL PRESIDENTE · Mar 23, 2014

I tripped out last thanksgiving when I saw that homeless camp right there.

Fez Hammersticks · Mar 24, 2014

Gentrification (of sorts) is coming ...eventually.

Every area of downtown west of the river has similar plans -- PSU/Goose Hollow/West End/Old Town/North Pearl/NW Dist.

I think it'll move this crowd east.

Hopefully.

Nevada dumping their mental patients to Portland isn't helping either.

MARIS61 · Mar 24, 2014

Most services for the homeless, soup kitchens and such, what few there are, are located there.

So if you'd rather be knee deep in shit on the East side, you must first move those services to the East side.

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Iconic Portland Chinatown- Overflowing with Poop

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Iconic Portland Chinatown- Overflowing with Poop

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EL PRESIDENTE Username Retired in Honor of Lanny.

jlprk The ESPN mod is insane.

EL PRESIDENTE Username Retired in Honor of Lanny.

Fez Hammersticks スーパーバッド Zero Cool

MARIS61 Real American

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