The sleek glass-cube Apple store in downtown Portland has been boarded up since it came under attack on the very first night of BLM rioting, May 29.
Rioters had no luck breaking the store’s remarkably sturdy glass on that first night.
The plywood went up the next day and soon was covered in graffiti. A tall, solemn George Floyd head was painted where the doors had been, the white Apple logo like a halo over his head. As if from this totemic focal point graffiti art spread over the city, following the spread of plywood going up so fast it had become scarce. Louis Vuitton and other high-end shops in the problematically named Pioneer Place across the street got the same treatment, and remain open but hidden in their once airy now cavernous space behind guarded heavy wooden doors, in a hair-shirt of BLM propaganda.
Long before and after Proud Boy Aaron Danielson was shot and killed by an antifa gunman downtown, graffiti calling for the murder of group members appeared (this is still there as of this writing):
Small acts of defiance appeared here and there in the graffiti, sometimes dealt with comically. When someone wrote “criminal” over one of the many George Floyd visages that dot downtown (like the Easter Island heads they resemble) someone else came along and tried to make a halo of it. The desecration below lasted days before someone noticed.
Posters for white victims of black violence have appeared as well, but it’s not clear anyone notices.
When someone did this to the original George Floyd head I thought we might have rioting all over again:
It’s eight months now Apple has been unable or unwilling to reclaim its store. The company’s glass-walled showroom model is untenable post George Floyd when peaceful protests could happen on any given day; all that glass is irresistible.
Obviously Apple can afford the bleeding (the loss of the Apple store probably hits the city harder than it hits Apple). The embarrassment is probably nothing too–this is BLM Apple is caving to, mind you.
But in acquiescing to their BLM makeover by leaving it in place all these months Apple has acquired ownership of it–and dissidents and general riff raff were now desecrating it. I was heartened to see, right there on the former Apple store/George Floyd shrine, the familiar bathroom limerick about “…he who reads these words of wit…”
But just pulling these sanctified boards down now might prove tricky in and of itself. One might have to do it in the dead of night. A smaller business elsewhere solved the problem by donating the plywood they took down to an African American history museum.
Apple came up with a plan. Having once encased the store to preserve the store, Apple announced it would now encase it all again, to preserve the previous encasement, which had been made precious with its BLM iconography.
Again the store became a sleek black monolith, more in line with its aesthetic, branded: “Apple stands with you in the fight for racial and social justice because Black Lives Matter. The community artwork will be preserved for future display.”
Now the store is donating the art to a local BLM subsidiary, Don’t Shoot PDX, announcing:
“Artists in the Portland community reimagined the blank canvas surrounding our Pioneer Place Apple Store and created a monumental art piece honoring the ongoing fight for justice and the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Apple stands in support of the artists and all who are fighting for social and racial justice”
Once we acquired enough of said community artwork I knew we’d have this problem, which is twofold: pulling down impromptu murals might bring antifa/BLM’s zombie wrath upon any given business, and the thus necessitated preservation of them means they’ll be turning up in schools and other public places, as art–bought with tax dollars from the grifters at such as Don’t Shoot PDX.
Clown on Portland.
untethered 