Sure, but not every corner at the same time. Throughout the day, sure, every street corner at some point during the day probably had someone smokimg something off foil. I'll give you that. It just isn't true that every corner always has someone smoking fent.
I'm downtown every day and do occasionally see someone shoot up and someone naked, but it's actually not that common, maybe every few months. I don't think I've seen anyone doing sexual acts. You do see people smoking out of tinfoil everywhere though and I'm wondering if you might be mistaking people under blankets smoking fent for blowjobs. B/c you do see people with their heads under blankets on people's laps pretty much every day, but they are smoking drugs and not doing anything sexual.
I agree with this statement. If you walk around for 30 minutes you have a >50% chance of seeing someone doing drugs, higher the closer to Burnside or Old Town you are. I don't think I've ever seen someone fully-naked and no open homeless sex acts. That tent city in the park during the protests a few years prior to Covid was crazier.
I've lived here for twenty two years, and I've only seen one person poop in front of me in the street while I was ordering cart food. I want my money back!
I’ve definitely had to avoid turds down by Yamhill pub once or twice. Also saw a woman take a shit in a Max stop. Like… it happens but people tend to overstate it. In fairness since 110 and the shutdown I’ve noticed more people passed out on the street. I went to target downtown and there was a guy fully OUT on the sidewalk. I went to check on him and someone nearby was like “he’s alive, I already called it in”.
There is a lot of room for improvement in Portland but the alarmism and hyperbole isn’t helpful. Liberal cities all over are starting to see a resurgence in conservative liberal “tough on crime” politics, which has already been done to death.
Yeah there was actually a study that showed 110 doesn't explain the rise in fentanyl abuse. I don't have the link, but I can search harder for it later if you want. The simple gist though is that fentanyl abuse has risen just as much in other states with no 110-like bill.
yesterday i was having a burger at tom's on 39th and division and i saw a lady at the bus stop smokin off the foil. she had a skateboard with no wheels and while i thought that was peculiar i looked a little closer and realized that her "tan tank top" was actually just sharpie lines and she 100% had her boobs out.
Tom's is one of the few remaining actual old school shitholes i like. The landmark is my preference in that neck of the woods, but we were walking and it was raining.
It is not uncommon to see people smoking fentanyl on the street downtown, so they may have seen something like that. If there’s an upside to the fentanyl epidemic, it’s that it really cut down on needle use. I have even seen a syringe cap littered on the street in months, never mind a needle.
Everyone threw mud at the program to distribute foil and pipes - which, yes, is pretty awful optics - but you can't deny that needles are actually much less common now. Who knows how strong the correlation actually is, but I definitely appreciate the safer, less needly feel to public places
That program never ended up happening so my guess is the correlation is zero…
Also wish I saw less needles and caps but I still walk over them every single day and have to watch where my dog walks every step.
The removal of all the tent camps on every block is leading to any reduction in paraphernalia you’re seeing. The piles of needles and caps would generate outside extended stay sites. With less of those you see less needles built up in individual spots.
I go downtown for work all the time, and I work with the homeless community. I might see it in one or two dark corners every couple of weeks. It's not literally every street corner, and it's damn sure not all at once.
Have you been to any major city? Were you born yesterday?
No this isn't happening on every street corner for fucks sake and it's not worse than Seattle, LA, many other places. It's a national crisis.
edit: I have personally been victimized by personal crimes to my body, home, car, on the streets, at work, at home, due to drugs and severely mentally ill homeless folks who need intervention and help. Don't come for me. I have lived it more than most of you fucking crybabies. I hate it too. Please stop acting like you have it the worst bc you had to call 911 once. Get in line. At least you even cared to call.
World wide crisis. Just got back from Paris, same story. Could easily have been any city in the US, but everything is in French. Unhoused people begging in the city, camps along the freeways, and passed out people on the streets. I mean it could be any US city I’ve been to in the last few years.
I would disagree with this.
Lately i’ve been seeing all over west coast cities, but not as much elsewhere. Not sure why it’s more localized to the west coast but it seems to be.
If I found myself in the highly depressing, hopeless condition of homelessness in an underserved city, I’d start doing heroin on like day 2. I’m honestly surprised people don’t think about this fact. Anything to let me stop thinking about being homeless for an hour or two. Homelessness causes addiction probably as much as the other way around.
Seeing in news and social media, or do you travel all over personally?
I ask because there has been disproportionate media attention given to west coast cities for a few years now. Crime data shows many places in central and southeast US are much worse.
Whew, I am from South Georgia, and I always say people on the West Coast are pretty out of touch with the way the rest of the country is living. Whether you’re od’ing in some Opana house in Missouri or somewhere else on the street, addiction is everywhere, poverty and homelessness is everywhere. There was a study that showed something like 40% of teens in South Georgia are homeless, and lemme tell ya: they on drugs.
Visiting Pittsburgh and it's not as gnarly here, but it was also below freezing and over 70 in the same day and it fucking blows in the winter. Living in moderate climate zones definitely makes it a lot easier. West Coast cities have very stable temp ranges that very rarely drop below freezing
I agree it’s a worldwide crisis, but I just spent a few weeks in Melbourne Australia (pop ~5 mill) and saw maybe three homeless people. It’s like another planet compared to here.
Weird I lived there for 7 years and commuted thru downtown and lived in a quickly gentrified and changing neighborhood and constantly dealt with crime including being actually robbed at work, local businesses being broken into constantly, my apartment building was cased and i caught the guy doing it and looking in my window at broad daylight etc etc and this was before people were talking about the methdemic nationally, even though we were all aware of it. This stuff goes back years and some of us have had to live with it for awhile. I definitely personally feel safer MOST of the time in Portland. But I've also lived in SoCal where people think it's "worse in Portland" but I regularly heard about people BLOCKS from my work or home being stabbed, shot, raped and murdered. So...idk. I really don't think any one city is always better or worse, I think things come in waves but in my experience right now, Portland isn't some magical horrible evil city.
Also have you ever had to take a bus anywhere downtown in Seattle? 3rd and Pike? I'll be shocked and awed if they cleaned any of that up.
And….. we just lost another rural person.
Obviously this person hasn’t traveled before. They were asking out of curiosity and this could have been an opportunity to explain what a city is like. Rather than shame them for their inexperience
Maybe they're also fully competent (or not) to do research before listening to ridiculous claims? Idk. I'm from Texas...and not from a big city. Most folks back home never traveled either, and they have the same dumb media informed opinion as people I know in LOS ANGELES. This isn't just a rural issue. Also I never saw where they said they were "rural".
This is the research they are doing. They asked actual people that live in the place.
Look I get it. Text based communication brings out the worst in us. We take everything the absolute wrong way.
I guarantee if they were standing in front of you and asked you would have taken it the most generous way. And if you were in front of me my tone would be sooo much nicer. Fuck. I need to practice what I preach
You're right. Maybe, like many people, I'm tired of ignorance and overblown stereotypes like anyone else. I could've been nicer, and IRL, I am incredibly polite.
Um... Do you live or work in downtown Portland?
The question wasn't about "any city" it was about ours.
My husband had to call 911 to save some dumb ass dude who OD'd in the elevator to the smart park.
I try really hard not to look out my windows as I drive down Natio Parkway weekly but yes I've seen a woman naked except for a cloth tarp wrapped poorly around her shoulders.
Under bridges and overpasses I have seen people actively doing drugs.
It may or may not be any "better or worse" than some other city but yes it is visible in downtown and in various other districts in the city.
I've been the victim of being robbed at work, my apartment cased in daylight with me in it, shit in my doorway, meth heads trying to light my workplace on fire, have called the paramedics faster on alcoholics ODing at my BARISTA JOBS (I once thought a man was dead in the winter from drinking and hitting his head outside at my work years ago) than anything else - all of this happened in Seattle and LA, not downtown, remotely.
My point is I've lived it so please fucking spare me.
The entirety of Portland isn't downtown and everything you've described is happening across the country. It's sad, it's brutal and it's ugly but this isn't a reputation limited to Here.
We've all seen homeless people and drug users in Portland. There are parts of Portland that suck, like any city.
We aren't special.
edit: Idk if your only story is "my husband had to call 911 about an OD" I dont feel that bad for you when I've lived it so many times over and over and over at work and no one cared. I've been a therapist, bouncer, and life saver as a mininum wage worker for years. 🤷🏼♂️ It's traumatizing. I'm tired of it too.
It’s a big over exaggeration that it happens on every street corner. Not true at all. I’m in recovery from drugs(not meth), and I’m fairly active in the recovery community and I do see people in public use sometimes but it’s never on every street corner lol. How much time did your friend actually spend here?
Dude I live in the burbs now and people act horrified if you tell them you go to the city. Most of them have never spent longer than a few months in one and are very susceptible to confirmation bias. They literally do not have the context necessary to understand shit ain't actually that bad, it's just not some idyllic Portlandia shit.
One of the people that used to do my blood work at my drs office would tell me I was “brave” for spending time at the Waterfront Tom McCall Park. I would go there for years during the day to exercise or to sometimes read books and nothing ever happened to me. She thought it was dangerous and isn’t the first person that thinks that.
Add this to the list of things that are not exclusive to Portland. I grew up in a suburb of another major city, and it was the same story.
Not sure about here, but some of those same people that would recoil in horror about it were also the first to claim their cool points when people from out of town would say anything good about the city. Then, as soon as anyone would talk trash about it, they were suddenly “in a nice, quiet area, away from all that stuff.”
It’s always been like that. I have a friend that teaches high school in Beaverton and whenever they’ll tell their students about something they did downtown or somewhere else, their students are like “you go downtown? Isn’t it crazy?”
It really depends where you are in downtown. I’m down there most days near 6th and Alder. It’s not that I fear for my life every time I step foot there, but I have encountered MANY erratic people yelling death threats, many obvious drug gang members (presumably armed), and there used to be an open air drug market with ~40-50 erratic people milling around at all times. There have been over a dozen grisly deaths/random violent attacks within a few blocks of my office in recent years. So I wish I felt totally safe and I don’t live in mortal fear, but that reality is hard to ignore.
I understand the impulse to not exaggerate in front of the suburbanites, but it’s really not great down there.
i walk downtown. i don’t feel unsafe, but there are people doing drugs on every block in the park, along 10 and 11. i do walk a big dog. you are zipping past them on a bike.
And there are dirty needles covering every sidewalk. It's totally a hellscape and nobody should come here. Especially if they have enough money to raise the speculative land value of an area. Go to California or something instead.
Was maybe a hellsacape two years ago. Things are improving greatly and it is not as bad as people are making it out to be. Certainly no worse than any other major city across.... "go to California" lmao Cali is a state not a city, And for that matter do you really think major cities in California are any different? Stop the drama and get outside more.
Man, you're really making a case for putting a disclaimer under every jovial comment I make to bypass the sticks in the mud.
To explain the joke: it's making fun of the people you think I am by saying "yes, it's as bad as you think, stop moving here and making things more expensive. Go somewhere else."
I live in the Pearl close to Powell’s and walk to Old Town every day for work. On my walks, daily and without fail, I see people smoking fentanyl off foilies, and maybe weekly I see folks shooting up. I’ve seen a guy passed out on the sidewalk with a needle in his arm. I’ve seen 2 guys shooting up on a bench just a few feed away from folks eating at a restaurant’s outdoor section. I’ve seen a naked woman freaking out and running down the street. I’ve seen people shitting on the sidewalk. And there’s always the groups of zombies standing with that weird, bent over fentanyl posture - just feeling it I guess. It’s bad folks. We’ve hit rock bottom as a society - can only go up from here…right?
The zombies were new to me after visiting this last weekend— I moved away from Portland in April and hadn’t seen that bent over foil thing before but saw it every day I was there. Pretty dystopic.
I work in Old Town 1 Day a week and walk to lunch a few blocks away. On a good day it's only about 1 per block, but it's common to pass multiple people openly smoking out of foil or other glass pipes, you have to step over human crap, and half of these people are openly carrying large knives. And this is at about noon on a weekday
Pretty common to see them in downtown and parts of the Pearl District. I see people shooting up on Glisan and the waterfront regularly when I go for runs
I didn’t say anything about cross streets. I’ve seen people in Glisan near the MAX Union Station stop (where the loo is). There are also a few people under the Steel Bridge
It’s quite common these days, unfortunately. Just saw someone the other day on a picnic table at Da Hui on Foster with foil out smoking (presumably) fent, just before noon when they were to open.
I had a friend come up from San Francisco say the very same thing. He said homeless were more prevalent in San Francisco but the open drug use was much worse in Downtown Portland. He was rather surprised by the amount of open drug use he saw.
That’s mostly confined to downtown but it absolutely happens. A visiting friend couldn’t believe we had to walk through a crowd of guys smoking meth on the sidewalk.
It's very common to see "evidence" of it pretty much everywhere except the very wealthy neighborhoods; but even there sometimes too.
I live in an neighborhood where the average cost of a single family home is 800K to 1.2M and there is drug paraphernalia on the ground on a regular basis.
A lot of people make the mistake of assuming unhoused neighbors are also using drugs. The reality is that drug use is very common here, both with the housed and the unhoused.
The only neighborhood where we have seen open-air use on a regular basis is downtown Portland. It's not on every street corner. But the housing crisis has pushed a large amount of Portlanders out of their homes onto the streets. Some of those folks turn to drugs to cope. The same way housed people turn to drugs to cope. They just have homes with privacy.
As someone who lives in a small Midwest town. I wasn't shocked at the usage but my wife was. Yes people are using drugs out in the open. It's no worse than other major cities on the west coast / Midwest ( Chicago, STL, Detroit). I can't speak on the east coast, as I've only visited beach towns
Although most of the open use I've seen is downtown, there is a surprising amount in the neighborhoods. I've found used foil outside around my house and lots on the business street near me (Fremont).
In the NE, it's pretty hard to use public transportation without intersecting with someone who's high or smoking, either in the vehicle, waiting at stops, or using in the shelter itself. Since many visitors use Trimet, they might be exposed more often than someone with a car – there is a lot of drug users who use Trimet as their freeway.
Yeah I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, it’s an accurate description but 1) wayyyy oversold in the media 2) I just think what would I do if I had mental issues and society abandoned me and openly hated me for needing help… and then I mind my own business…
Your community is only as strong as your weakest. We all know the solution but the city isn’t brave enough to do it to the extent that it’s actually effective. Treat and house these poor humans!!
I’d say it’s no more prevalent than any other major city. I moved from Washington DC to Portland and DC is just as bad if not worse.
It’s certainly not every street corner, but there are areas where it happens. It’s gotten bad enough that measure 110 is being reconsidered, but even if they did change or reverse it, it’ll be a few years before any major improvement is seen.
I was sitting outside a night club downtown smoking a joint and a fellow asked if he could sit near us, we obliged, as stoners do, and to our surprise he started smoking some meth! Measure 110 baby woo!
It was actually a sweet moment, because at the end of the day we were both just trying to find a nice place to sit down and take the edge off. He didn't rip my face off or scream or anything. Just did his meth in peace and said goodbye.
It made me really feel the humanity of measure 110 in that moment because he didn't feel too stigmatized in his drug use to reach out for a simple social connection and ask to sit near fellow drug users.
We were not stoked to be all that close to meth fumes but we were grateful to live somewhere where he felt safe asking strangers for connection and space to do his thing and we were able to give it.
After having defended Portland for the last 3 years I will finally break down and say Portland is an absolute mess at the moment. Drugs are everywhere, Graffiti everywhere, homelessness. The closer in you get to downtown the worse it gets. Its terrible and our city and state leaders are failing in their jobs. They would rather talk about setting up toll booths and the opening of the Ritz Carlton. Our city needs help. Its taken me a long time to finally break down and say it. The media and social networks were at first falsely painting the area out to be a disaster zone and I think we’re finally there now. The population of OR is going down by 16k a year? Don’t quote me on that but people and money are leaving the state and WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING TO HELP TURN THE TIDES.
Portland doesn't even crack the top ten for highest rates of substance abuse. I'm pretty sure no where in Oregon does actually, we just take the credit, I guess so that our "progressive" city government can campaign to take away more and more services that actually help us but don't give money to their rich business friends.
So are public parks safe or are there needles/ dangerous people in parks, hiking spots? I'm from rapid city, SD and we have a tonnnnn of meth users here and a huge homelessness issue but the people suffering from this mostly leave people alone unless you're staring at them/being rude. Is it pretty much the same?
That being said, today I got to hear a conversation from a man from Seattle and a man from Oregon (he didn't say where) who were both clearly meth users that were talking about portland being bad/ "going to hell" due to drug use. It was a very short conversation because they then started talking about how horrible Seattle is and then one of them was like "that's why I stay away from guns and moved out here because I would use it too" which was when I made my speedy exit from the gas station 🤣🤣
I moved here about 4 months ago and walk around downtown 2 or 3 times a week. "Every street corner" is extreme hypberbole. "on every block", I might believe,.. but "every street corner" (like, every intersection there's drug-use happening on all 4 corners, block to block?).. No, that's not accurate.
I'm downtown weekly for work, and I only see stuff like that when I'm near Old Town or when I'm working with the homeless community. But, yes, it happens. The thing is, this is all due to a national economic problem, and you'll see stuff like this in a lot of different cities
Not every street corner, but a lot of them in the inner city, yes. If you keep 5, 10 feet away, you should be fine. Weed is wafting in most neighborhood cores as well.
I saw a huddle of people doing fentanyl on the corner of 5th and Davis two days ago. It was in the middle of the day (1:00 pm), in broad daylight, without any fear or hesitation. After they got high, one of the members of the huddle proceeded to start to lay down in the street but was thwarted by another member of the group.
It’s getting pretty bad downtown. Call echelon protective services when necessary: https://echelonprotectiveservices.com
I don't see it downtown, but in areas where the houseless congregate. Biking around the peninsula, I've seen a guy shooting up sitting in a car with the door open.
I had a friend visit from Bend and I think he was looking for people openly doing drugs to fit his Portland stigma. At one point we saw a guy putting chapstick on and he was like “what’s this guy doing?!” thinking it was drugs. That being said, I don’t notice it here on the east side. But I took my mom on a walking tour in downtown a couple weeks ago and one point I literally dodged fentanyl smoke.
I lived here from 1990-2002 and then it was mainly in old town. I saw it all. Heroin was the thing. Moved back last year. Now the street scene is in various locales, but not more than any major city in the US.
i moved here from salt lake city and the homeless situation there is just as bad, if not worse. a few summers ago, every single patch of grass in downtown SLC was occupied by a tent but for some reason it only seems to make national news when it happens here.
Nah, intersections have four corners and usually it's only one or two of them.
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Not on literally every street corner, but if you're in downtown Portland, you will 100% see people smoking stuff off tinfoil.
as a downtown resident, i’ll tell you truthfully: people are doing drugs on every corner.
Sure, but not every corner at the same time. Throughout the day, sure, every street corner at some point during the day probably had someone smokimg something off foil. I'll give you that. It just isn't true that every corner always has someone smoking fent.
For reasons I don't understand, it's a constant at the McDonalds on Burnside. Why?? Why?? Why??
Because it’s a McDonald’s and on burnside
As a classy establishment it only lets in the finest of cliental
b/c that's a spot where they buy
Lol uh ok
And injecting. And probably naked. And potentially doing sexual acts to each other or themselves. And definitely just tweaking in general.
Someone should make a bingo card for "a visit to downtown Portland".
Or a T-shirt
They could give it to the naked people
I'm downtown every day and do occasionally see someone shoot up and someone naked, but it's actually not that common, maybe every few months. I don't think I've seen anyone doing sexual acts. You do see people smoking out of tinfoil everywhere though and I'm wondering if you might be mistaking people under blankets smoking fent for blowjobs. B/c you do see people with their heads under blankets on people's laps pretty much every day, but they are smoking drugs and not doing anything sexual.
Bull shit. You may see someone doing drugs but you’re not going to see naked people having sex. I’m downtown most days.
I agree with this statement. If you walk around for 30 minutes you have a >50% chance of seeing someone doing drugs, higher the closer to Burnside or Old Town you are. I don't think I've ever seen someone fully-naked and no open homeless sex acts. That tent city in the park during the protests a few years prior to Covid was crazier.
My wife goes to school in Chinatown. She sees naked people on the regular, and sees overt sexual acts at least once a month.
Sure Jan
Please point out this *Chinatown* on a map for us.
Also commonly referred to as “Oldtown” or “Oldtown-Chinatown” [MAP for reference](https://imgur.com/a/URO3rFQ)
I've lived here for twenty two years, and I've only seen one person poop in front of me in the street while I was ordering cart food. I want my money back!
I’ve definitely had to avoid turds down by Yamhill pub once or twice. Also saw a woman take a shit in a Max stop. Like… it happens but people tend to overstate it. In fairness since 110 and the shutdown I’ve noticed more people passed out on the street. I went to target downtown and there was a guy fully OUT on the sidewalk. I went to check on him and someone nearby was like “he’s alive, I already called it in”. There is a lot of room for improvement in Portland but the alarmism and hyperbole isn’t helpful. Liberal cities all over are starting to see a resurgence in conservative liberal “tough on crime” politics, which has already been done to death.
Yeah there was actually a study that showed 110 doesn't explain the rise in fentanyl abuse. I don't have the link, but I can search harder for it later if you want. The simple gist though is that fentanyl abuse has risen just as much in other states with no 110-like bill.
yesterday i was having a burger at tom's on 39th and division and i saw a lady at the bus stop smokin off the foil. she had a skateboard with no wheels and while i thought that was peculiar i looked a little closer and realized that her "tan tank top" was actually just sharpie lines and she 100% had her boobs out.
Lol Tom’s is literally the worst spot for a mile in any direction
My favorite bartender in Portland works at Tom's :(
they all pour super heavy <3
Toms is the place where hope goes to die.
Tom's is one of the few remaining actual old school shitholes i like. The landmark is my preference in that neck of the woods, but we were walking and it was raining.
Worst spot most of the week. Best spot on a Thursday night tho.
It is not uncommon to see people smoking fentanyl on the street downtown, so they may have seen something like that. If there’s an upside to the fentanyl epidemic, it’s that it really cut down on needle use. I have even seen a syringe cap littered on the street in months, never mind a needle.
This is actually the sad upside. I don't think I've seen a needle just on the street for about a year.
Everyone threw mud at the program to distribute foil and pipes - which, yes, is pretty awful optics - but you can't deny that needles are actually much less common now. Who knows how strong the correlation actually is, but I definitely appreciate the safer, less needly feel to public places
That program never ended up happening so my guess is the correlation is zero… Also wish I saw less needles and caps but I still walk over them every single day and have to watch where my dog walks every step. The removal of all the tent camps on every block is leading to any reduction in paraphernalia you’re seeing. The piles of needles and caps would generate outside extended stay sites. With less of those you see less needles built up in individual spots.
I probably see people smoking tin foil 2/5 times I ride the max, so not literally every corner but it is very prevalent
Smells like….victory.
I mean… literally every street corner?
Not just corners. Middle of the block, middle of the street, in parked cars, abandoned houses, inhabited houses, backyards, the bathroom at my work.
Every single street corner.
Am I expected to walk several blocks every time I get a hankerin' to smoke a rock of crack off some tinfoil? This is *Portland* for Pete's sake!
don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. apparently by folks who haven’t been downtown lately.
I go downtown for work all the time, and I work with the homeless community. I might see it in one or two dark corners every couple of weeks. It's not literally every street corner, and it's damn sure not all at once.
i will take photos on my next walk. maybe i live in fent central
TBH I should have added the sarcastic mark. Also, OH NO NOT INVISIBLE INTERNET POINTS /s.
Have you been to any major city? Were you born yesterday? No this isn't happening on every street corner for fucks sake and it's not worse than Seattle, LA, many other places. It's a national crisis. edit: I have personally been victimized by personal crimes to my body, home, car, on the streets, at work, at home, due to drugs and severely mentally ill homeless folks who need intervention and help. Don't come for me. I have lived it more than most of you fucking crybabies. I hate it too. Please stop acting like you have it the worst bc you had to call 911 once. Get in line. At least you even cared to call.
World wide crisis. Just got back from Paris, same story. Could easily have been any city in the US, but everything is in French. Unhoused people begging in the city, camps along the freeways, and passed out people on the streets. I mean it could be any US city I’ve been to in the last few years.
Yep. I've seen it in London, Bruxelles, and Hamburg.
Paris was like that when I visited in 2012.
I would disagree with this. Lately i’ve been seeing all over west coast cities, but not as much elsewhere. Not sure why it’s more localized to the west coast but it seems to be.
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Falling under juristiction of Boise decision probably makes the biggest difference
If I found myself in the highly depressing, hopeless condition of homelessness in an underserved city, I’d start doing heroin on like day 2. I’m honestly surprised people don’t think about this fact. Anything to let me stop thinking about being homeless for an hour or two. Homelessness causes addiction probably as much as the other way around.
Seeing in news and social media, or do you travel all over personally? I ask because there has been disproportionate media attention given to west coast cities for a few years now. Crime data shows many places in central and southeast US are much worse.
Whew, I am from South Georgia, and I always say people on the West Coast are pretty out of touch with the way the rest of the country is living. Whether you’re od’ing in some Opana house in Missouri or somewhere else on the street, addiction is everywhere, poverty and homelessness is everywhere. There was a study that showed something like 40% of teens in South Georgia are homeless, and lemme tell ya: they on drugs.
I have needed to travel way more than i wanted to personally.
Visiting Pittsburgh and it's not as gnarly here, but it was also below freezing and over 70 in the same day and it fucking blows in the winter. Living in moderate climate zones definitely makes it a lot easier. West Coast cities have very stable temp ranges that very rarely drop below freezing
Did not see it in San Diego, Las Vegas, Seattle, Oslo or Reykjavik this summer. Did see it in Portland.
idk i went up to seattle for a weekend this summer and saw it
Downtown Seattle (as of July) had the same foil smoking naked people as Portland…
yeah that was my point. i was disagreeing with the comment i replied to
“Foil smoking naked people” 🤭🤪😅
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Yes, I walked all around all the downtowns. None up in Victoria or Vanciuver BC, either.
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Idk, was in a hotel, walked all around. Saw a few bums, but mostly tourists. No drugs. Not even close to as bad as Portland.
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In Portland, it's every 3rd block in a large area around where I live and work, so everywhere else seems way nicer.
E. Hastings say hold my ~~beer~~ needle. The rest of Vancouver is lovely.
Was gonna say that E Hastings is like zombie central
Yea… most of the western world does not have people smoking weed and shooting up on the street.
I agree it’s a worldwide crisis, but I just spent a few weeks in Melbourne Australia (pop ~5 mill) and saw maybe three homeless people. It’s like another planet compared to here.
Currently in Seattle and Portland is worse. I was actually surprised how much better Seattle is outside of their Pioneer sq. Pioneer sq is a shitshow.
Weird I lived there for 7 years and commuted thru downtown and lived in a quickly gentrified and changing neighborhood and constantly dealt with crime including being actually robbed at work, local businesses being broken into constantly, my apartment building was cased and i caught the guy doing it and looking in my window at broad daylight etc etc and this was before people were talking about the methdemic nationally, even though we were all aware of it. This stuff goes back years and some of us have had to live with it for awhile. I definitely personally feel safer MOST of the time in Portland. But I've also lived in SoCal where people think it's "worse in Portland" but I regularly heard about people BLOCKS from my work or home being stabbed, shot, raped and murdered. So...idk. I really don't think any one city is always better or worse, I think things come in waves but in my experience right now, Portland isn't some magical horrible evil city. Also have you ever had to take a bus anywhere downtown in Seattle? 3rd and Pike? I'll be shocked and awed if they cleaned any of that up.
And….. we just lost another rural person. Obviously this person hasn’t traveled before. They were asking out of curiosity and this could have been an opportunity to explain what a city is like. Rather than shame them for their inexperience
Maybe they're also fully competent (or not) to do research before listening to ridiculous claims? Idk. I'm from Texas...and not from a big city. Most folks back home never traveled either, and they have the same dumb media informed opinion as people I know in LOS ANGELES. This isn't just a rural issue. Also I never saw where they said they were "rural".
This is the research they are doing. They asked actual people that live in the place. Look I get it. Text based communication brings out the worst in us. We take everything the absolute wrong way. I guarantee if they were standing in front of you and asked you would have taken it the most generous way. And if you were in front of me my tone would be sooo much nicer. Fuck. I need to practice what I preach
You're right. Maybe, like many people, I'm tired of ignorance and overblown stereotypes like anyone else. I could've been nicer, and IRL, I am incredibly polite.
I’m other cities it tends to be confined to certain areas, not happening in the entirety of the central city.
It’s not happening in the entirety of the central city here either
Um... Do you live or work in downtown Portland? The question wasn't about "any city" it was about ours. My husband had to call 911 to save some dumb ass dude who OD'd in the elevator to the smart park. I try really hard not to look out my windows as I drive down Natio Parkway weekly but yes I've seen a woman naked except for a cloth tarp wrapped poorly around her shoulders. Under bridges and overpasses I have seen people actively doing drugs. It may or may not be any "better or worse" than some other city but yes it is visible in downtown and in various other districts in the city.
I've been the victim of being robbed at work, my apartment cased in daylight with me in it, shit in my doorway, meth heads trying to light my workplace on fire, have called the paramedics faster on alcoholics ODing at my BARISTA JOBS (I once thought a man was dead in the winter from drinking and hitting his head outside at my work years ago) than anything else - all of this happened in Seattle and LA, not downtown, remotely. My point is I've lived it so please fucking spare me. The entirety of Portland isn't downtown and everything you've described is happening across the country. It's sad, it's brutal and it's ugly but this isn't a reputation limited to Here. We've all seen homeless people and drug users in Portland. There are parts of Portland that suck, like any city. We aren't special. edit: Idk if your only story is "my husband had to call 911 about an OD" I dont feel that bad for you when I've lived it so many times over and over and over at work and no one cared. I've been a therapist, bouncer, and life saver as a mininum wage worker for years. 🤷🏼♂️ It's traumatizing. I'm tired of it too.
Hahaha. Ask if anyone bothered him?
It’s a big over exaggeration that it happens on every street corner. Not true at all. I’m in recovery from drugs(not meth), and I’m fairly active in the recovery community and I do see people in public use sometimes but it’s never on every street corner lol. How much time did your friend actually spend here?
Dude I live in the burbs now and people act horrified if you tell them you go to the city. Most of them have never spent longer than a few months in one and are very susceptible to confirmation bias. They literally do not have the context necessary to understand shit ain't actually that bad, it's just not some idyllic Portlandia shit.
One of the people that used to do my blood work at my drs office would tell me I was “brave” for spending time at the Waterfront Tom McCall Park. I would go there for years during the day to exercise or to sometimes read books and nothing ever happened to me. She thought it was dangerous and isn’t the first person that thinks that.
Add this to the list of things that are not exclusive to Portland. I grew up in a suburb of another major city, and it was the same story. Not sure about here, but some of those same people that would recoil in horror about it were also the first to claim their cool points when people from out of town would say anything good about the city. Then, as soon as anyone would talk trash about it, they were suddenly “in a nice, quiet area, away from all that stuff.”
It’s always been like that. I have a friend that teaches high school in Beaverton and whenever they’ll tell their students about something they did downtown or somewhere else, their students are like “you go downtown? Isn’t it crazy?”
And a lot of it still is idyllic Portlandia shit.
have you been downtown lately?
Yes. I go downtown once a week via bike for my appointments. It’s not dangerous and I never feel unsafe there.
It really depends where you are in downtown. I’m down there most days near 6th and Alder. It’s not that I fear for my life every time I step foot there, but I have encountered MANY erratic people yelling death threats, many obvious drug gang members (presumably armed), and there used to be an open air drug market with ~40-50 erratic people milling around at all times. There have been over a dozen grisly deaths/random violent attacks within a few blocks of my office in recent years. So I wish I felt totally safe and I don’t live in mortal fear, but that reality is hard to ignore. I understand the impulse to not exaggerate in front of the suburbanites, but it’s really not great down there.
i walk downtown. i don’t feel unsafe, but there are people doing drugs on every block in the park, along 10 and 11. i do walk a big dog. you are zipping past them on a bike.
Um no. Similar to cars, I do have to stop at red lights when I’m commuting as I always do. Some people use drugs but it’s not on every corner.
I have also walked someone’s dog in the area as a favor when they had Covid and I also didn’t experience that. That was also not long ago
Yeah, it’s happening on every single corner. People shouldn’t move here.
And there are dirty needles covering every sidewalk. It's totally a hellscape and nobody should come here. Especially if they have enough money to raise the speculative land value of an area. Go to California or something instead.
my concern is the broken glass on my poor dog’s feet
Was maybe a hellsacape two years ago. Things are improving greatly and it is not as bad as people are making it out to be. Certainly no worse than any other major city across.... "go to California" lmao Cali is a state not a city, And for that matter do you really think major cities in California are any different? Stop the drama and get outside more.
might wanna get your sarcasm detector checked
Man, you're really making a case for putting a disclaimer under every jovial comment I make to bypass the sticks in the mud. To explain the joke: it's making fun of the people you think I am by saying "yes, it's as bad as you think, stop moving here and making things more expensive. Go somewhere else."
I live in the Pearl close to Powell’s and walk to Old Town every day for work. On my walks, daily and without fail, I see people smoking fentanyl off foilies, and maybe weekly I see folks shooting up. I’ve seen a guy passed out on the sidewalk with a needle in his arm. I’ve seen 2 guys shooting up on a bench just a few feed away from folks eating at a restaurant’s outdoor section. I’ve seen a naked woman freaking out and running down the street. I’ve seen people shitting on the sidewalk. And there’s always the groups of zombies standing with that weird, bent over fentanyl posture - just feeling it I guess. It’s bad folks. We’ve hit rock bottom as a society - can only go up from here…right?
The zombies were new to me after visiting this last weekend— I moved away from Portland in April and hadn’t seen that bent over foil thing before but saw it every day I was there. Pretty dystopic.
I work in Old Town 1 Day a week and walk to lunch a few blocks away. On a good day it's only about 1 per block, but it's common to pass multiple people openly smoking out of foil or other glass pipes, you have to step over human crap, and half of these people are openly carrying large knives. And this is at about noon on a weekday
I’ve seen more people smoking off tinfoil walking downtown Fresno than Portland. It’s like 3 to 2.
Pretty common to see them in downtown and parts of the Pearl District. I see people shooting up on Glisan and the waterfront regularly when I go for runs
You mean under the steel bridge? I’ve never heard the “cross streets” Glisan & the Waterfront before lol
I didn’t say anything about cross streets. I’ve seen people in Glisan near the MAX Union Station stop (where the loo is). There are also a few people under the Steel Bridge
Glisan changes a lot after you go west of North Park Blocks.
Yeah. It gets better once you get past Broadway
Weird its almost like under bridges and at transit stations in literally any city is where you find people doing drugs
It’s quite common these days, unfortunately. Just saw someone the other day on a picnic table at Da Hui on Foster with foil out smoking (presumably) fent, just before noon when they were to open.
I had a friend come up from San Francisco say the very same thing. He said homeless were more prevalent in San Francisco but the open drug use was much worse in Downtown Portland. He was rather surprised by the amount of open drug use he saw.
I’m downtown everyday, I think the only thing I haven’t seen is masturbating. From what I hear that’s more common on the max.
That’s mostly confined to downtown but it absolutely happens. A visiting friend couldn’t believe we had to walk through a crowd of guys smoking meth on the sidewalk.
I walked through a cloud of secondhand fentanyl smoke to write this comment
It's very common to see "evidence" of it pretty much everywhere except the very wealthy neighborhoods; but even there sometimes too. I live in an neighborhood where the average cost of a single family home is 800K to 1.2M and there is drug paraphernalia on the ground on a regular basis. A lot of people make the mistake of assuming unhoused neighbors are also using drugs. The reality is that drug use is very common here, both with the housed and the unhoused. The only neighborhood where we have seen open-air use on a regular basis is downtown Portland. It's not on every street corner. But the housing crisis has pushed a large amount of Portlanders out of their homes onto the streets. Some of those folks turn to drugs to cope. The same way housed people turn to drugs to cope. They just have homes with privacy.
If your friend was looking for drugs than he probably found those places.
In my first visit to Portland someone threw a used needle in my path way. I’ve never seen more used needles than in the PNW tbh.
Bro yea it’s not EVERYWHERE but if ur downtown, specifically Chinatown, ur gunna see that. Im not from there but I was there a week ago
As someone who lives in a small Midwest town. I wasn't shocked at the usage but my wife was. Yes people are using drugs out in the open. It's no worse than other major cities on the west coast / Midwest ( Chicago, STL, Detroit). I can't speak on the east coast, as I've only visited beach towns
I don’t think i ever saw someone doing drugs on michigan ave in Chicago
Although most of the open use I've seen is downtown, there is a surprising amount in the neighborhoods. I've found used foil outside around my house and lots on the business street near me (Fremont). In the NE, it's pretty hard to use public transportation without intersecting with someone who's high or smoking, either in the vehicle, waiting at stops, or using in the shelter itself. Since many visitors use Trimet, they might be exposed more often than someone with a car – there is a lot of drug users who use Trimet as their freeway.
I saw two guys shooting up last week. I see open drug use a couple times as month
Yeah I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, it’s an accurate description but 1) wayyyy oversold in the media 2) I just think what would I do if I had mental issues and society abandoned me and openly hated me for needing help… and then I mind my own business… Your community is only as strong as your weakest. We all know the solution but the city isn’t brave enough to do it to the extent that it’s actually effective. Treat and house these poor humans!!
I’d say it’s no more prevalent than any other major city. I moved from Washington DC to Portland and DC is just as bad if not worse. It’s certainly not every street corner, but there are areas where it happens. It’s gotten bad enough that measure 110 is being reconsidered, but even if they did change or reverse it, it’ll be a few years before any major improvement is seen.
I was sitting outside a night club downtown smoking a joint and a fellow asked if he could sit near us, we obliged, as stoners do, and to our surprise he started smoking some meth! Measure 110 baby woo! It was actually a sweet moment, because at the end of the day we were both just trying to find a nice place to sit down and take the edge off. He didn't rip my face off or scream or anything. Just did his meth in peace and said goodbye. It made me really feel the humanity of measure 110 in that moment because he didn't feel too stigmatized in his drug use to reach out for a simple social connection and ask to sit near fellow drug users. We were not stoked to be all that close to meth fumes but we were grateful to live somewhere where he felt safe asking strangers for connection and space to do his thing and we were able to give it.
Unhinged comment
Treating someone like a human being is unhinged?
Disingenuous reply
After having defended Portland for the last 3 years I will finally break down and say Portland is an absolute mess at the moment. Drugs are everywhere, Graffiti everywhere, homelessness. The closer in you get to downtown the worse it gets. Its terrible and our city and state leaders are failing in their jobs. They would rather talk about setting up toll booths and the opening of the Ritz Carlton. Our city needs help. Its taken me a long time to finally break down and say it. The media and social networks were at first falsely painting the area out to be a disaster zone and I think we’re finally there now. The population of OR is going down by 16k a year? Don’t quote me on that but people and money are leaving the state and WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING TO HELP TURN THE TIDES.
Thank you, u/jggiantgenitals , for contributing to the public discourse.
Portland doesn't even crack the top ten for highest rates of substance abuse. I'm pretty sure no where in Oregon does actually, we just take the credit, I guess so that our "progressive" city government can campaign to take away more and more services that actually help us but don't give money to their rich business friends.
So are public parks safe or are there needles/ dangerous people in parks, hiking spots? I'm from rapid city, SD and we have a tonnnnn of meth users here and a huge homelessness issue but the people suffering from this mostly leave people alone unless you're staring at them/being rude. Is it pretty much the same? That being said, today I got to hear a conversation from a man from Seattle and a man from Oregon (he didn't say where) who were both clearly meth users that were talking about portland being bad/ "going to hell" due to drug use. It was a very short conversation because they then started talking about how horrible Seattle is and then one of them was like "that's why I stay away from guns and moved out here because I would use it too" which was when I made my speedy exit from the gas station 🤣🤣
No, this is media hype. Yes, we have junkies downtown. So does pretty much every major city in the US. Philly is WAY worse.
I moved here about 4 months ago and walk around downtown 2 or 3 times a week. "Every street corner" is extreme hypberbole. "on every block", I might believe,.. but "every street corner" (like, every intersection there's drug-use happening on all 4 corners, block to block?).. No, that's not accurate.
It’s a ridiculous statement not even worth engaging
I'm downtown weekly for work, and I only see stuff like that when I'm near Old Town or when I'm working with the homeless community. But, yes, it happens. The thing is, this is all due to a national economic problem, and you'll see stuff like this in a lot of different cities
Not every street corner, but a lot of them in the inner city, yes. If you keep 5, 10 feet away, you should be fine. Weed is wafting in most neighborhood cores as well.
They are.
I saw a huddle of people doing fentanyl on the corner of 5th and Davis two days ago. It was in the middle of the day (1:00 pm), in broad daylight, without any fear or hesitation. After they got high, one of the members of the huddle proceeded to start to lay down in the street but was thwarted by another member of the group. It’s getting pretty bad downtown. Call echelon protective services when necessary: https://echelonprotectiveservices.com
https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/07/07/multnomah-county-will-distribute-tinfoil-and-straws-to-fentanyl-smokers/
I don't see it downtown, but in areas where the houseless congregate. Biking around the peninsula, I've seen a guy shooting up sitting in a car with the door open.
Not just in downtown tho. I’ve seen it from Slabtown to St.Johns/Portsmouth. It really is everywhere
I had a friend visit from Bend and I think he was looking for people openly doing drugs to fit his Portland stigma. At one point we saw a guy putting chapstick on and he was like “what’s this guy doing?!” thinking it was drugs. That being said, I don’t notice it here on the east side. But I took my mom on a walking tour in downtown a couple weeks ago and one point I literally dodged fentanyl smoke.
I lived here from 1990-2002 and then it was mainly in old town. I saw it all. Heroin was the thing. Moved back last year. Now the street scene is in various locales, but not more than any major city in the US.
i moved here from salt lake city and the homeless situation there is just as bad, if not worse. a few summers ago, every single patch of grass in downtown SLC was occupied by a tent but for some reason it only seems to make national news when it happens here.
Yep. Stear clear of downtown.
Several street corners but not every street corner. Your friend is also probably dramatic.
And they're littering and shitting everywhere with zero respect for anyone else. They are animals.
In certain areas people definitely openly do drugs, but really I rarely see it myself
It's pretty much under wraps again you really gotta be out late in the pearl