“Is that the Whiskey Bar back there?” I asked the only other guy to turn up at the wrought iron gate leading to an alley behind the bar I’d found locked earlier. “Yeah. You don’t go in this way though. The front doors open at ten.” “I see.” Someone had told me the event beganContinue reading “Still Life and Live Painting”
Tag Archives: diary
Punk and Politics
I was at the bar at Kelly’s Olympian in downtown Portland for three pints of Irish stout before I realized the leftist fundraiser in the next room was already in progress. Unaware of the live show annex next door, I had thought they were going to set up somewhere in the back of the bar.Continue reading “Punk and Politics”
Tomoki Martens plays the violin across from the downtown library in Portland Oregon.
Portland
Police will only say robbery suspect Quanice Hayes had a replica gun on him when he was shot three times and killed earlier this month. A grand jury gets another two weeks to decide. This protest was on the 16th.
Diary, February 9, 2017; Bittersweet Decay
The girls from work are all young and pretty, and in various stages of wreckage. Taylor is delicately featured, pale, a classic red head except for the not quite red hair. She’s done up too much, with the excessive eye liner and dark red lipstick that is a current, unfortunate fashion; it cannot overcome herContinue reading “Diary, February 9, 2017; Bittersweet Decay”
Diary, January 19, 2017
The weather improved just in time for Portland’s first scheduled anti-Inauguration protests, having gone from sub-freezing cold snap (the last three days have been the first days above freezing this year) to warming just enough to turn the precipitation into cold, sometimes freezing, rain, then today easing up to cool but dry, even sunny atContinue reading “Diary, January 19, 2017”
Diary: "Bernie, Bro!"
The James Cromwell-lookalike with the siren spent a good hour following around and drowning out pro-Trump speakers (for a frail old player he was effective boxing out in the Paint, I mean Hate). I broke away from him here and from across the square I see this guy heckling Trumpenproles and I can’t help but messContinue reading “Diary: "Bernie, Bro!"”
Diary: Yesterday Afternoon
A tall man standing in front of Mary’s strip club steps purposely to the curb and leans into an automobile grill. As if he’s trying to be heard through a hole in a wall he shouts, no, screams into the car’s impassive plastic faux-metalwork.I head upstairs. The wood steps feel solid but still creak plaintivelyContinue reading “Diary: Yesterday Afternoon”
Diary: Fragmentary Life
I passed a man and his young son on the street. I turned to look and caught a glimpse of the boy looking up at his father, having asked him something, with a look that was all trust and expectation. Nothing profound, nothing special; the scene was commonplace. But so much was told on hisContinue reading “Diary: Fragmentary Life”
Diary: Leering Arabs
At the University downtown school is back in. Groups of young people are everywhere on the street, moving furniture, some carrying bedding, as they move into the apartments near the school. As I cross the street I’m cut off by a distracted driver in an SUV pulling up to the far curb in front ofContinue reading “Diary: Leering Arabs”
untethered 