According to national rankings, we live in a terrific city for entrepreneurs, a great place to raise kids, and – ahem – one of the most perfect spots in the country. But let’s not get too arrogant.
By SARA DONNELLY | July 26, 2006
The most unsettling arrangement of trash receptacles ever known to man |
“It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)It’s summertime. That means the air is sauna-thick; the sidewalks are clogged with three parts tourists, one part locals; and your favorite bag of choice is now a fanny pack. During these long days, you can’t spit without hitting a walking tour or trolley bus doing the rounds of our pretty city. But we at the Phoenix think it’s a crying shame that any of our readers complete the summer believing Portland is perfect. After all, we know pretty things owe their loveliness to the ugly stuff around them – that’s why we try to have our holiday photos taken with the Forecaster staff. So, in honor of terrible development, city stench, and just plain bad attitudes, the Phoenix and a handful of local aesthetes offer up our own essential summer tour of the stankiest, most heinous parts of Portland. Try and survive it, you dandies.
Your ugly tour starts with a truly heinous view of our city’s capitol building, City Hall. Climb into the cab of your ugly bicycle rickshaw with your ugliest pal at 161 Marginal Way, the Department of Health and Human Services Building.
Here, cast your virgin eyes southward to Portland’s City Hall and feel your corneas burn as you try in vain for a view past piles of junk at the base of the Bayside neighborhood. After gazing in horror upon the gnarled metal separating you from our city offices, demand your ugly rickshaw driver snap her misshapen bottom into gear so you can merge into the lung-busting exhaust of Marginal Way traffic and make your way east 0.8 miles to the
Portland Water District East End Treatment Facility .
Feel the bile of abhorrence rise in your throat as you wonder why the public would have actually paid money to construct what appear to be enormous overturned diaphragms. If you could travel back in time to 1979 when these monstrosities were born, you would surely have concocted a most ugly demonstration in Monument Square with a horrendous drum circle to register your displeasure with the reprehensible masses.
As your rickshaw cycles around the treatment plant, try at all costs not to breathe as the smell will surely recall long-repressed memories of feces-smeared outhouses, accurately, since this is the city’s sewage treatment plant. Flee the sensory assault by shrilly demanding your rickshaw driver get on the East End bike trail near the graffiti wall. Try to avoid watching your driver grossly drip sweat as they pull you and your pal 0.7 miles to where the trail meets East End Beach. Point to the top of the East End hill and say something to the effect of “Up! Or else!” and don’t stop until you are on the Eastern Promenade.
Cast your unfortunate eyes left and witness the hulking yellow monstrosity at the far end of the Eastern Promenade, the Portland House Condominium Complex, before turning right on the Eastern Promenade and heading to the Congress Street intersection, a few streets down. Take a left and follow Congress Street down past the beautiful Portland Observatory near North Street. Relax into its loveliness and dream of a prettier pal beside you. But don’t get too comfortable.
