When J-Ro Went To Portland….Part 5

Southeast Grind, my second home in PDX!

My first Portland Sunday was a proper day of rest (The Lord himself would have been delighted with me). I was completely cream crackered, having been on the go since I arrived and not really paying any attention to the spectre of jet lag that was hovering around me. It eventually walloped me upside the head and rendered me incapable of any sort of forward motion or day-planning, so I just threw on some threads, loaded up my backpack like Dora the Explorer, and headed over to Southeast Grind, my unofficial Base of Operations for things to do in Portland (click here to read about why I loved this place so much).

I pretty much decided I was going to plant my tired old self there for the day, but first I had to grab something to eat, and being as wrecked and fuzzy-brained as I was, I chose to fall up the road and go to Jack In The Box, an American fast food franchise outlet. It wasn’t the smartest decision I’ve ever made. I hated it. I’d been pretty fussy and paranoid about food since I’d arrived in the States (it’s a long-standing issue that I won’t bore you with in THIS article anyway), and I think I’d had a pre-existing notion about how the chicken teriyaki rice & veg bowl I’d ordered would taste…and it didn’t deliver. I was bitterly disappointed, pretty much all of the things I’d eaten that looked familiar to me all tasted just that little bit different to how I’d expected them to taste, so in my mind I couldn’t ingest them. I chewed grumpily on the twisty fries I’d also ordered instead. At least they tasted like I thought they would. I also tried to make a dent in what was certainly the largest liquid-carrying vessel for one person I’ve ever seen. It went waaay beyond ‘Go Large’…they called it The Quencher. I could barely hold it in one hand without being terrified I’d drop it. I’m surprised it didn’t come with armbands and a fucking lifeguard.

Literally Me.

It’s safe to say that Jack In The Box isn’t exactly gourmet fusion cuisine for foodies. Thus, I was Jack’s complete lack of surprise when I found that I’d basically left the whole thing and, despite the best efforts of my kidneys and bladder, the remaining two-thirds of the bucket o’ fizz I’d stupidly said ‘yes’ to. I noticed that there was a guy outside the main doors who looked a bit out of it, and was rooting through the fast food joint’s bins outside. I looked at my tray and instantly felt like a complete asshole for contemplating chucking out so much food. So ninja-style, I gathered the bowl of chicken and rice and The Quencher and sidled out the door without the staff seeing me, and I gave them to the guy with a brief disclaimer of “the food is fine, I was just full” in case he thought I was trying to pass off something that had gone bad. As it turned out, he barely registered me and just muttered something unintelligible as he took the food off me in a complete daze and shuffled away. I didn’t really mind; I was just glad SOMEONE was enjoying the food and it wasn’t wasted. Pay it forward and all that.

But it got me thinking as I left Jack In The Box and strolled the short distance to Southeast Grind. I was about to put down roots for a few hours in a lovely place with some nice tea and maybe a treat of some kind, tap-tapping away on my new laptop in a foreign country I’d been able to travel to for a holiday, feeling happy as a clam; so I took stock and felt so incredibly grateful to have the life that I have, that I’m able to find contentment in the everyday things I do (when my mental health is being managed properly obviously).

A mini shanty-town set up at the junction of two streets next to a main road. The white object directly under the tree on the left-hand side is an umbrella for shelter & shade.

The problem of homelessness is a massive one in Portland, from what I’ve seen first-hand and from what some locals have told me. Maybe it’s because the population is roughly ten times that of Limerick, but it’s very visible and in a very unfamiliar way to me. I took a couple of pictures (see above and below) of the setups I saw dotted throughout the city centre and the suburbs that you would never see out on the streets of Limerick.

This is a slip road coming off a freeway where cars roar past at full speed. I’m standing across the road from the zebra crossing to take a pic of this particular camp, because it actually takes up a big portion of the footpath.

Look; anyone with a molecule of common sense knows that there are homeless people in every city, and Limerick is most certainly no exception. I’m not blind to it in my hometown by any means, and this isn’t a preachy bleeding-heart post telling people what to do or anything like that. It’s just me observing the different forms that homelessness takes wherever you go depending on population and city size. I’ve never seen anything like those mini tent townships; as fantastic as Portland was, that was definitely something that has stayed with me. That and the incredibly wide demographic of people affected; young, old, disabled, war veterans, addicts, men, women…nobody seemed immune. Which is a scary-ass thought. There but for the grace of circumstance go I.