Hobo Drifters

Portland: rats, homeless people, and more

Portland is full of good times and surprises. The crew at this juncture was Ashley, Ben, Jason, Erika, and me. We stayed with a fine young lady by the name of Court (good friend of Ashley's) in her luxurious yet toaster-less apartment. Ashley spent most of the time hanging out with Court and Erika was visiting her family so Ben, Jason and I were left to wander around downtown Portland.

What I gathered about Portland:

Apparently when schools get old they turn them into movie theater-restaurant-bars (one of which we went to) which is a good idea.

Concerts there are cool (we saw Mono and Maserati play).

The homeless population is out of control: They either build elaborate huts in weird places in the middle of town or just cover themselves with blankets and garbage and lay down. Also some of them apparently sleep all day (or are dead), and the other ones swing canes and crutches wildly at each other and at innocent bystanders.

On weekends they have a huge market. At this market you can expect to see hundreds of tents selling various trinkets, thousands of hippies, a few bucket drummers, and at least one Blink 182 cover band.

They have a famous skate park under a bridge called Burnside that is pretty shady (one of the obstacles in this skate park is to avoid being pushed off of ramps by the local homeless guy). We stopped by and were pretty impressed by its awesome trashiness, not to mention the guy playing shred air guitar on his skateboard.

Alright last but definitely not least... As we were wandering/talking/sharing laughs all of the sudden Jason lets out in a shrill voice, "shit!" and points down to the ground, things got a little crazy for a second, but eventually our nerves calmed down and our heart rates slowed and we realized that what we were looking at was a little rat (or a big mouse). What really irritated me about this rat was that he absolutely did not care that I was standing there staring down at him. At any moment I could have dropped something heavy right on him, or kicked him across the street, but it just sat there happily munching on his garbage. Anyways... the rat and I ended up going our separate ways peacefully but to this day I remain irritated and secretly hope that someday this little rat ends up being a hearty meal for a hungry hobo.