Old Town Assholes

People in Old Town are just outrageous assholes, aren't they? I'd read an article about CC Slaughters that had customer complaints about "street people" and thought it must have been some biased billionaire framing of Portland as Socialist Hell, but, it turns out, I think, that those people who hang out there really are assholes.

I was walking around the block smoking a joint, and I passed these people smoking at a table outside the bar. I silently and gently approached, holding out two quarters for the lady to clearly see, and asked, "Do you have an extra cigarette?" I was looking right at two packs of cigarettes sitting on the table in front of her.

She said, "No. Sorry, I don't."

I swung my head slowly down, without changing my expression, to look again at the two packs of cigarettes sitting right there on the table, before swinging my head all the way around to the man at my right. Then I asked, "Do you have a cigarette you could spare?" Again, I'm holding two shiny quarters right there for the taking. I'm not trying to "bum" a cigarette, and I'm not being in any way hostile. Those people were just incredibly hostile. I couldn't believe it—I was so bemused by the entire situation.

Then I saw an older lady standing at the opposite corner on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette. I smiled and waved as if hailing a taxi and casually approached her across two crosswalks, holding two shiny quarters out for her to take. "Excuse me. Do you have an extra cigarette you could spare?"

She looked at me with such anger and sternly said, "No!"

And, seriously, this is just from the last ten minutes. Old Town is like that all the time. Even the businesses here—except for a couple of nice ladies at the corner grocery and the fancy snack store—feel like they're run by ex-convicts who hate customers. Honestly.

People complain all the time about the homeless, but it's the housed people who are the real problem out here.