So I’m walking the dog today, and decide to head on up to the old neighborhood…Park Blocks, by PSU. Totally forgot about the Farmer’s Market, but I figured, what the hell, I’ll walk around it. It’ll be fine. Then I notice all the construction going on and the outlets to the street that are blocked off, so I figured I’d walk through so I could get past it and start wandering home.
First, I hear one snotty couple point and say “No dogs.” I ignore them, because I just figure they’re kinda assholes. I’d always been allowed to walk my dog through the market. He’s only 30 pounds, and he already went to the can a few blocks away. Besides, I always carry bags and always clean up after him. So I start cutting through so I can get around the mess, and someone else points and whispers “No dogs.” The person standing next to her had some kind of yorkie on a leash, so I figured she was just being an ass to me.
I start walking behind this asshole who is smoking while walking through the crowd. I try to get around him because my fucking eyes are burning from the low quality tobacco that he’s spewing out his nostrils. Then this little jackass prances up to me and says “We don’t allow pets down at the market anymore”. What the hell? I’m just trying to get through that mess. I never asked for them to have their fucking market all over the park! They literally block off 2 or 3 apartment buildings and most of the park with that market, and they don’t give you anywhere to get around it without having to walk a block either way to circumvent the damn thing.
This is kind of an example of the kind of shit I’ve been noticing more and more over the past couple years. It’s the kind of snobbishness I’ve come to expect in California or Seattle, the kind of stuff that you know you’re going to encounter there so you go out of your way to avoid it. A huge part of the charm of Portland, at least for me, has always been that you can do things and people won’t really pass judgment on you for it. For the most part, people would understand and know that the roles could be switched, so they just stayed cool about it.
Another point I’m making is that Portland seems more than happy to sacrifice its dog-friendliness for stupid snobbery. What, you don’t think people walk their dogs through that park before and after that market? They do. Those dogs poop right there, right where that food cart is standing. I know from firsthand knowledge. I used to live right there. I know all about it. I’ve stepped in it…right there. Some people are assholes and they don’t pick up their poop. I saw an example of that just yesterday with some guy who walked down to the green area across the street from me and let his dog crap right by the restaurant parking lot, and didn’t have the decency to pick it up. It happens. But punishing the good dog owners with the bad is the idiots answer.
And all the while, a guy can walk right through a crowded farmers market smoking low-grade cancer sticks, and no one bats an eye. What is a dog going to do that dogs haven’t done already if you put your farmers market right where people walk their dogs very regularly? The people who run the PSU farmers market really are the worst types of assholes…they’re the types that don’t think for themselves. Is it because dogs aren’t allowed in stores? What defines a store? Must a store be indoors, or outside? Does a coffee shop that sells stuff count as a store, and if so, does that mean that dog friendly establishments such as Iron Mutt Coffee and the Lucky Lab are operating illegally?
If the Farmers Markets aren’t operating on top of a giant hobo bathroom like Skidmore, they’re operating on top of a dog park. If you want to keep the dogs out, renovate an old supermarket or office building, and put the market in there. Put a sign on front that says “Not Dog Friendly, Sorry”. Don’t treat dog walkers like they bear the mark of Cain. That’s the kind of attitude that Portland needs to get back to differentiate itself again. Now, it’s just full of self-serving, obnoxious, hypochondriac, narcissistic idiots who want Portland to become a suburb of San Fran or Seattle. The people who really run this town are the types of people who were laughed at when they first started coming here. They’re the people who wanted the “snobby green elitist” part of the Portland persona, but wanted nothing to do with the “quirky, laid back, weird” part of the persona, so they have taken their generally strong financial clout and effectively lobotomized the parts of the Portland persona that they didn’t care for…generally the parts that didn’t make them feel like they “fit in” and didn’t make them feel superior to other people.
Anyway, a whole lot of what I loved about this town is pretty much on life support, if it’s still alive. I really don’t know where it is located so I can check and see. It’s certainly going downhill in dog-friendliness, that’s for sure. It’s unfortunate how many people didn’t clean up after their animals, but it’s just as unfortunate that idiots had to take a sledgehammer to everyone, including the responsible people as well. They cut funding to dog parks, they stopped supplying bags to the parks, they pass these poorly defined laws that ultimately prevent people walking their dogs from going pretty much anywhere where people sell anything…even if that dog walker really could use a glass of lemonade or a coffee or tea or something while out walking. Can’t get it. The law says that I’ve got to be thirsty. No one would be kind enough to get that for someone, either. That’s just how these people are. They leave their dogs at home. Always. These people reward treating animals like possessions, and not like friends, not taking them out to walk, to get some air, to socialize, to help them be healthy.
Anyway, sorry about the rant for a first post. I’ve been blogging since the 90’s, so I don’t consider this a first one. I’ve just been doing it so intermittently on so many sites, and finally they just made it easy enough to get my stuff working on my own domain. So, here we go. But this is just something that really bugs me, because I made this town my home and it’s just turning into assholeville, and it’s really turning out to have been a big mistake.
I could have made a whole lot better living in Cali or Seattle. I “got by” up here, and stayed for reasons that seem to be disappearing every year. The best people keep leaving town and they keep getting replaced by assholes. I wished those assholes would just stay whereever it is they come from, but they keep reproducing, and that’s pretty goddamn alarming.
Quick follow up: Yes, as I stated earlier, I understand why people would ban dog walkers from some places. But there are other places where it just doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I also know that punishing everyone for the sake of a few shows a fundamental lack of understanding of human psychology. A better solution would be to really enforce and fine the people who don’t clean up after their dogs. Punishing the people who DO clean up after their dogs and generally are responsible, in time, makes them care less and less about being responsible. But that’s not the point of this whole thing. The point is that there are an alarming number of people in this town who gleefully enjoy the loss of freedom for others who aren’t doing anything wrong (at least as far as they know) and gladly pick up a pitchfork and dig in. I find people like that creepy, like the people in Orwell’s 1984 who liked Big Brother and did what was expected of them, or the brainwashed citizens from Fahrenheit 451. It’s also really sad to see people so willing to trade in their freedoms just because they can’t figure out a more fair solution to a problem. Even more sad when they’re so willing to trade in someone else’s freedoms because it doesn’t effect them. And even if you do ban something/someone from an area, the least you can do is provide some means to get around it, you know? Like a path or something. I’d pitch in to help set it up.