I spent most of the week in Portland, Oregon.
Interesting city, to say the least. Great food, great atmosphere and a lot of bat shit crazy types wandering freely downtown. I lost track of how many times I got panhandled. The vast majority of the people were very polite when I told them I didn’t have any change for them.
One incident wasn’t as polite. A lady got her purse snatched by another lady. I gave chase, along with a couple of hotel bellhops from the Westin. The Snatcher made it about a block when out of the blue she got clotheslined by a super guy, super happy guy. He was eating a sandwich and made a snap decision – throw down the sandwich and do a reverse purse snatch. He was ultimately successful and other members of the public caught the perpetrator and held her for police. The key point in mentioning this incident is that the public got involved and provided community security services, which I applaud.
I saw numerous people wearing Obamagear. At a used clothing store called The Red Light the sign outside proudly announced that they had Obama socks back in stock. I asked how well they were selling – like hotcakes. Nobody I talked to liked John McCain. I saw no stickers, no signs and no other evidence of any support for the old, pale white guy downtown. In fact, when I asked about him, people gave me weird looks, like I was asking if they would consider sleeping with an alien or how they would feel about performing surgery on themselves.
Beautiful city. I jogged downtown by the river a couple of times and the wide range of types of people was a fascinating study. I’d love to visit again.
My hosting company went DOWN this week, and the blog was out of commission for three days. MIdphase is not on my Christmas list right now.