2023: A Year In Neighborhood Gossip
Revisiting a pet sitting ice cream Venmo request, IZZE free piles, and the shitty commercial corridor between Lloyd Center and the new 7th Ave bike lane
Wow. Now that was a crazy one, huh? And they said 2020 was a dumpster fire, 2023 was 2020 plus 3 years!!! Can you believe that??? Now I have for you another year end round up. Not about music, movies, or books that came out. No big important stories making proclamations like “The Year of the Strike,” asking “Is it too late to reverse the effects of climate change?” or fellating our new robot overlords by giving another take about AI and the empty pit of tech optimism.1 No this one is about all the little things that happened in my life and the little neighborhood and people around me. Stuff that basically doesn’t matter but maybe it will leave you thinking it was kind of interesting in the way of a conversation with a guy on the bus who said he’s not accepting a wrongful termination settlement and will be taking Trader Joe’s down in court. These stories that both live on the fringes yet feel right in your backyard, gossip that’s juicy like a salisbury steak. Something you can chew on, but maybe you shouldn’t. Something that went cold but don’t worry it basically tastes the same after you microwave it. No matter how you cut it 2023 was a HUGE year for gossip. Try as we might to stay clean, we can’t help being messy!!
Now I’m a little late to even writing these updates from my stories this year. I spent the holidays relaxing on a train trip from Phoenix to Los Angeles, and back up to Portland that went into the new year. Between standing at the corner of 14-lane city street hell (Peoria, AZ) and sitting in the observation car of an Amtrak of the lower Cascades seeing the beauty and splendor of the year’s first snow while my girlfriend stages a picture of me pretending to read the Third Neapolitan Novel, there wasn’t much time to blog. And now the year has really turned over. Everyone’s talking about the tiny dicked guy in the Bass Pro Shop Fish Tank2 and the junnels; clearly 2023 looks busted in the rearview mirror. But there’s never a bad time to reflect and ring in the new year. So lookout for a few more “old year vs. new year” content this month. Enjoy.
Some Ice Cream Leftovers (Readers Respond)
“Big Couver was back at the bar. He sat in his corner, kombucha in hand with his legs spread. He was recounting the crazy Lyft ride he’d shared with his other two friends Trucker* and Calum* that weekend. It was a warm evening in early summer, and the golden hour combined with a tender breeze to create a perfect reprieve to a hot day. Sleepy and his roommate were back in town, it was the day of the last softball practice before the season started, and everyone who was anyone was going to be at Irving Park later to play or watch from the bleachers. Then the notification came.
Venmo: Sleepy is requesting $9 — ice cream” (From “The $9 Venmo Request”; July 11, 2023)
You all had opinions. When I went back to LA to visit family I asked my mom and she sided with Big Couver because “what’s $9.” Then my mom asked my brother and he sided with Sleepy on a semantic argument, “If they said they can have things in the ‘fridge’ that does not include the freezer.”
Friends asked questions, exes reached out to exes. All of this Big Couver would call, “HEALING! This story is HEALING!” My extremely scientific Instagram poll was basically deadlocked at 50/50 on who was in the wrong. Some people in a Twitter group DM said that both actors need to get a grip.
My favorite was when I told the story to one of my roommates and she looked incredibly concerned3 and said, “Cam you need to talk to Sleepy about seeking therapy and maybe while he sorts out why he did the request in therapy, you should ask Big Couver if he thinks male bonding over being mean to each other is really an honest way of communicating?” Ouch.
While this may seem like picking at an almost healed over scab, I am glad to report:
beef = squashed.
In early winter Sleepy surprised all of us when he hand delivered a Ruby Jewel ice cream sandwich to Big Couver at the local watering hole Worker’s Tap. All facts confirmed by both sides and the neutral third party barkeep/quest giver/gossip purveyor. For any ice cream connoisseur this was seen as a classy move from a typically miserly source, with the ice cream sandwich both costing more and tasting better than a pint of B&J’s Phish Phood. As for Big Couver… while murmurs went around that his pet watching skills were around a “C+, B if graded on a curve,” he is still offering his boutique services of house sitting and pet photography at bargain store prices. Despite unconfirmed reports that cats peed on a bathmat under his watch, some improvements have been seen as well.
One anonymous customer, with a new bamboo style bath mat, was left happy with a step up in quality of recent services rendered. “I would say this was more of an A- effort. The house was clean and I was even pleasantly surprised to find a pint of Blue Bunny4 Rocky Road variant in the freezer when we got back,” the customer stated. “It was about a quarter full.”
Nobody Cries Over Spilled IZZE
“Sometimes my work commute makes me nervous. Living in an apartment across the street from a seltzer warehouse and caddy corner to another seltzer warehouse, obviously has its perks. Though it can also feel like Frogger biking between forklifts delivering pallets of fizzy water and the semi-trucks hauling them away. It wasn’t even a year ago when a freight truck crashed into a cyclist, killing Portland chef Sarah Pliner on her way to work.
The day starts early and ends late for the bubbly packers. Living in the basement I am slightly shielded from the noise of the operation, but my roommate Leah4 reported hearing the jazz ensemble of forklift honks start at 6am sharp. This accompanied their rotating playlist of “Ms. Officer,” “Party Rock Anthem,” and Banda Music throughout the day till quitting time at 10pm. This is particularly a problem around 5pm with the added stress of soccer parents parking their Teslas and Subaru Outbacks in our lot and letting their kids run amok in traffic. But that day we manifested abundance and the neighborhood gods delivered.” (From “The Last Mango IZZE Water”; August 11, 2023)
The ebb and flow of the tides of the seltzer industry remain a mystery to our little warehouse pocket.5 While the workers' resolve, to take moving products about as seriously as the meager non-union wages, remains steady—buoyant even. This past summer our quad plex reaped the benefits of seltzers fallen through the cracks and off the trucks no less than three times. Whether there would be another seltzer spill, to leave the streets sticky and vaguely fruity, was not a question of if but when. Nothing says summer like the slightly sweetened, slightly carbonated taste of a non-alcoholic cold one. And as they say, nothing beats a free cold one because some anonymous workers have adopted the pastime of showing off their near mastery of forklift conducting by doing doughnuts in our parking lot.
One rainy autumn afternoon, my roommate Fiona tipped us off on another spill. She was out the door at the time and couldn’t stick around to pile them up, only sending us a group chat photo of one she’d taken as a roadie: Blood Orange flavor. It was slightly worse than Mango but other trusted beverage connoisseurs have said otherwise.
During the summer a worker told me if he could choose to drop something it would be Spindrift every time, since they also package and ship those in the same facility. But the seltzers fall as the seltzers fall. Thus, foul play was not suspected.
By the time I got home from work we were in the dregs. The pile was not a massive tribute to abundance that had our neighbors clamoring to celebrate hand in hand with the workforce. This time I arrived and it felt a lot more like a nuisance. A few dented and damaged cans, orange and purple liquid puddling in the driveway alongside muck and oil runoff from the forklifts. I took a couple of the least disgusting cans but I didn’t feel good about it. Whether it's the law of diminishing returns, seasonal depression, or just a bad batch I don’t know. What I do know is they can’t all be winners. Only time can tell if the last spill was the best spill.
Updates on some Midholes
“This bar was not one of those “dive bars” that actually serve good food, have $7 beers, and get put on local lists that immediately disqualify them from being a dive. It was the real deal. A real dump. The New 715 made up its own little reactionary small business corridor sharing a city block (and wall) with Cotton Cloud Futon, who in 2021 had their own Broadway Bike Lane controversy when they tried to stop the implementation of a new bike lane on 7th that would connect with the Blumenauer Bridge because they had a “loading zone” there.
No, the New 715 Inn was a different breed entirely. They served cup-o-noodle ramen, those deep fried tacos you can buy at the Safeway deli up the block, and fish sticks. Beer was warm out of the tap somehow. Truly the stuff of myth.” (From “Ode to a Shithole”; October 2, 2023)
While there is not much going on the NEW 715 Inn front,6 the little Lloyd Center offshoot corridor of NE 7th between Broadway and Wielder has some new faces. The Pizza Schmizza saga continues. After briefly switching franchise ownership during the pandemic before going out of business again, the Pizza marquee was taken down over the holiday. As of Monday January 8th a new restaurant held a grand opening in its place: Yosu Sushi.
On the Wielder side of things, the NW chain Muchas Gracias, famous for being open 24 hours to serve out of their mind high teenagers and theater kids from Salem, OR all the way up to Vancouver, WA rebranded as Habeneros. Being a few blocks from my office and reasonably priced I’ve gone a dozen or so times since the rebrand. Basically all the menu items and employees are exactly the same but we get these fun little pepper guys on the logo now. That’s a W amidst a neighborhood so used to L’s.
The 7th Ave. Bikeway is pretty much finished too. They finally removed the parking in front of my office. My boss and I cycle to work everyday, but despite this he originally complained about removing the parking because like four times a year he needs to load up his car for work. He seems to have backed off this point because it's way better for our commutes and it pissed off the annoying right wing loser that owns the futon store who now seems to be selling off the remainder of his inventory.7 If there is anything we can bond over it is the politics of resentment and weird NIMBYs not getting their way.
Speaking of, the traffic calming circle that used to have a tree that had all their neighborhood association people mad is also gone, they had a brief sit in protest and signs opposing PBOT, but removing the tree and installing a new smaller little traffic circle and the weirdest over engineered bike turn lane I’ve ever seen, prevailed.8 I don’t totally know how I feel about it yet. It’s nice that they painted it green I guess, but I’ve literally never used the green bike turn thing. It doesn’t really prioritize bikes in any way and just makes the turn weirdly long for a street without a ton of traffic anyways. The one time I did actually use it was when Taylor and I were going back to her house and she said, “Why don’t we ride the bikeway just this once.” It was romantic and impractical.
Okay I can’t help myself, I’m vain and mean: Communism will never be “fully-automated” and certainly shouldn’t be in a black pit of nothingness like “space.” I’m cool with it being “gay” and “luxurious” though, but if you’re pro-AI, you’re pro slavery and pro-feudalism.
And photoshopping Nathan Fielder’s face on him.
For men generally?
Discount Plaid Pantry brand of ice cream but always nice to find a little left behind right?
Some weeks they are working 6am-10pm Monday-Saturday, bussing in temp workers on a chartered bus parked on the street with a line of long haul trucks ready to pack orders all the way down the median on 12th. Then the next week the warehouse is empty, they don’t open till noon and close down completely Thursday-Sunday. Just this morning (Thursday November 11) I left and the warehouse was completely closed.
No new bar, no new chalk-cock messages. The windows remain boarded up and I briefly saw a couple of people go inside a month or so back, seemingly to take out furniture and stuff not nailed down. Maybe some copper wire, who knows.
At least I hope so, rest in piss fuckers.
The neighbors won the pretty decent concessions of PBOT installing two additional speed bumps to slow cars down.