There’s a red porta-potty in Southeast Portland that, for a long time, had a message spray-painted across its hard-plastic surface: “Marry Me Baby.”
Every time I drove by, it made me laugh. Sometimes I’d picture a girl walking up to it, reading the message, knowing it was intended for her, shrugging, saying “why not” and walking in.
The other day, I noticed the message had changed: “Happy BDay Baby,” it reads now. The story keeps evolving in my mind. Who is “Baby?” Is this an inside joke, or sincere? And though I love this evolving art project — this bathroom-turned-message-board — I can’t help but think about how irate people must be over it.
Last fall, the city dropped 103 of these portable bathrooms around the city, addressing one of the fundamental issues facing unhoused people: where do you go to the bathroom when you don’t have one?
Of course, immediately upon installing the red porta-potties, the city was flooded with “dozens of angry emails” from residents who wanted them gone. The tacit suggestion was that some Portlanders would rather people shit on the ground.
It’s easy to pile on Portland NIMBYs — believe me, I love to do it. But this sort of callousness to other people is not unique to us. In 2014, I worked on a story (that was frustratingly shelved) about people in one Washington city that were trying to pass an ordinance banning body odor. Yes, you read that right. People told me how angry it made them when they’d go into the local library, only to be confronted with the smell of patrons that they presumed were homeless. Instead of allocating money for portable showers, people figured they would just ban … sweating.
I think the anger over these red bathrooms was a part of a reality of Portland that has been ignored for a little too long. For the longest time, media — both local and national — has reflected a reputation into the wider world of a silly place where beer and bikes and donuts are everywhere. Kumbaya, every day. Portland’s supposed progressivism always leads stories about this place. But that image of this city was one I never really recognized. It portrayed an image of a playground for people who have disposable income and, apparently, the time to drink brunch cocktails. The rest of us are too busy trying to make rent.
I had been working on this essay all month, and had written up to here when, last week, I decided I’d shelve it. I’d write about something else. Something happier, maybe. But then I woke up to relevant news: in the Sunday New York Times, a full page advertisement (paid for by Travel Portland) made me know I was on the right track. Here’s what it said:
This is Portland
You’ve heard a lot about us lately. It’s been a while since you heard from us.
Some of what you’ve heard about Portland is true. Some is not. What matters most is that we’re true to ourselves.
There’s a river that cuts through the middle of our town. It divides the east and west. But it’s bridged — over and over again. Twelve times, to be specific. And that’s kind of a great metaphor for this city.
We’re a place of dualities that are never polarities. Two sides to the same coin that keeps landing right on its edge. Anything can happen. We like it this way.
This is the kind of place where new ideas are welcome — whether they’re creative, cutting-edge or curious at first glance. You can speak up here. You can be yourself here.
We have some of the loudest voices on the West Coast. And yes, passion pushes the volume all the way up. We’ve always been like this. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
We have faith in the future. We’re building it every day the only way we know how, by being Portland.
Come see for yourself.
Love, PORTLAND
There are many things that are true about this: we do have bridges that allow people to travel across the river. And, yes, there are many things that have been said about Portland that are not true.
But, in a way, this piece of advertising only adds to the pile of mistruths. I found myself particularly irked by this line: “We’re a place of dualities that are never polarities.”
Would you agree that is true if you look at the news of the last week? For the first time in history, a grand jury returned on an indictment accusing a Portland Police officer of fourth degree assault — a misdemeanor — for striking a protester in the head with his baton. It’s on video.
In response to this accusation of wrongdoing, fifty members of the department’s Rapid Response Team resigned (they’re still employed with the department). The suggestion was that any scrutiny of police officers’ behavior, any attempt at holding them to account, was too far.
Wouldn’t you say this is the very definition of polarity?
Or how about this polarity: when there are people camping in every neighborhood — tents around parks, on freeway roadsides, on sidewalks, entire districts of unhoused people huddling from the rain in weathered tents — the city tries to sweep them away. Tells them to go. But there isn’t anywhere to go.
This is not a duality, or a polarity. It’s a basic denial of humanity.
The marketing and money of this city has been a little too loud for a little too long. Rich Portland. White Portland. Portland west of 82nd. Brunch line Portland. “We” is not “we” if it is only the voice of one subsection of this place, not the vast rest of us. The “we” who are worried for our neighbors, the “we” who are afraid that if city leader’s haven’t listened to us yet, they may never.
So, I’ve got a great idea: What might be a better, more accurate, advertisement would be to run a photograph of my favorite public toilet in The New York Times, and alongside it, there can be a commitment by Portland leaders to ensure this is a place where we will not retch at the sight of poverty, where we hold police accountable, where we will not sweep away our most vulnerable people until everyone here has a place to live. What would actually be creative — groundbreaking, even — would be for Portland to see poor people as neighbors, not adversaries. Actual living, breathing humans just like themselves, whose circumstances — not moral failures — led to their situation. Portland needs to make sure everyone has a seat at our table first before we invite the world over to eat.
Why not say boldly in the national paper of record that this city acknowledges that the way things were done here for so long were fundamentally broken? That over the last year, we’ve all actually learned something.
I want to live in a place that says it will help its most vulnerable people long-term — and mean it. I want Portlanders to look at those people struggling and figure out a way to help, instead of calling the city to complain. Call me naive, an optimist, a dreamer, a bridge builder. Sure, maybe I am. Maybe this is all too aspirational. But is the idea of admitting who we are worse than the piece of fiction Travel Portland ran in The New York Times this morning?
I want Portlanders to believe so much in this place that we commit ourselves to fixing it. To look at all of the hard truths and instead of running away, bend down on one knee and marry ourselves to it. To promise never to give up.
Now that would be something worth promoting.
11. Marry Me, Baby.
I left Portland about a decade ago (around the time all my friends started moving out past 82rd) but this post reminds me of the parts of the city I actually miss. I was a substitute teacher without a car so I spent a lot of time moving through the parts of the city that don't fit the NYT ad profile. Living alongside people that had grown up there and were building inclusive communities as fast as they could before being priced out of the neighborhood. Organizing resources and protests. Defending against Nazis. "Never polarities" lol.
I love this so, so much.