Last Friday my friends and I drove into downtown Portland to go to one of our regular bars, the Tube. The Tube is located in the Chinatown neighborhood next to a nightclub with stripper poles called Dirty and a nightclub with a mechanical bull called Dixey. This area has one of the highest densities of clubs and bars in Portland. It also has the highest density of homeless people. (They used to be called bums, vagabonds, and wastrels in less sensitive times. Now some people suggest that it is more appropriate to refer to them as the housing challenged.)

Homeless are drawn to chinatown because there are many shelters and soup kitchens in this area and because it is a prime spot for panhandling. There is a lot of foot traffick, and most of these walkers have disposable income and are intoxicated, two factors which make panhandling at least marginally profitable in this area.

On this particular night we were walking past a bus stop on Burnside and second. While we were waiting for the light to turn a man at the bus stop turned to me and asked if I could spare some change. I noticed that, at the same time he was asking me for money, he was sending a text message on his iphone. Obviously this man was not housing challenged, unless he mortgaged his house for the opportunity to check his e-mail and facebook on the go. Reflexively I replied, “sorry man.” This is my normal response when people hit me up for cash. Generally I don’t give money to people who on the street because it doesn’t seem fair to give to some and not others, and I’m certainly not forking over cash to everyone who asks me for some. A moment after I delivered my knee-jerk response my mental gears started spinning and I asked myself, “why does a guy with an iphone need money from me?” Galvanized by the absurdity of this situation I turned around and asked him, “So, how much money are you trying to get? Do you have bus fare?”

“Naw man,” he said. “I need to get $1.50 for the bus.”

“Well good luck” I told him as the signal changed and we crossed the street.

Later in the night after enjoying a set of house beats and classic hip-hop tunes by resident dj, Dr. Adam, my friends and I stepped outside for a cigarette. We were approached by a man in a wheelchair who asked us if we could spare a dollar. One of my friends reached in to his wallet and handed him a dollar. My curiosity piqued by my earlier encounter with the man at the bus stop I decided to question this fellow about his life and his needs. One always assumes that a panhandler is either using the money you give him for necessities like food or to feed another necessity for some people, a drug addiction. But after the iphone encounter I realized that there could be a multitude of reasons for panhandling such as being unprepared for practical concerns. Maybe some people start panhandling because they’re bored and then realize that they have a talent for it. I could even imagine panhandling as a dating strategy, “hey you got a dollar? While you’re at it can I get your number too?” But, let’s put hypotheticals aside and get back to the dialogue…

ME: It’s pretty cold out here isn’t it?

Dude: Yeah, it is, really cold.

ME: Do you have a place to sleep tonight?

Dude: No, no I don’t.

ME: Are there shelters around here where you can sleep?

Dude: Yeah there is but there’s long lines and you have to wait hours to get in.

ME: Wow, that’s a long time. You have to wait for hours?

Dude: Yeah, well like an hour. They fill up fast.

ME: And are there places you can get food?

Dude: Yeah, there’s cafeterias. But they don’t have much variety.

ME: What do you prefer, eating at those places or panhandling.

Dude: Panhandling. They don’t give you any selection at those places. You have to eat what they serve, noodles and sauce. When I panhandle I get to eat what I want.

ME: What’s your favorite place to eat?

Dude: Izzy’s. I love Izzy’s. Ten bucks and you get all the pizza and ice cream you can eat.

Me: Oh, yeah that’s a good deal. How about Chipotle, do you like Chipotle?

Dude: Naw, it’s ok. I at there yesterday and they don’t put that much meat in their burritos.

…

At this point my friends had finished smoking and were headed back into the bar so I cut the conversation short. I wished the man a good night and returned to the music and merriment.

I’ve found recently that it’s pretty fun to strike up random conversations with folks, especially folks that have a lot of time on their hands. People that aren’t in a hurry give you detailed and sometimes personal stories. Often these can be people in service capacities such as waiters, cashiers, and people who give out free samples. My friend Shoshone liked to chat up people who campaigned for political campaigns and religious groups. These people can be pretty interesting but you have to be able to not be bothered by their constant attempts to convert you or conscript you.

This particular conversation gave me some more insight into poverty and its many forms. Firstly, there is visible poverty and invisible poverty. The most visible poverty is that which is right in front of your face. The man who stands in front of you asking for a quarter or a dollar. But there are many forms of invisible poverty. I didn’t encounter any of the homeless people that night who chose to sleep in shelters because they were already inside for the night. There are also many people who are poor to the point that they cannot afford food or other basic needs but who have some form of housing, often provided by relatives. There are those that are too proud for charity, who will not ask for help even when they need it. Then there are others who are working poor. Perhaps they have enough money to make ends-meet but are living in bad environments or in pain. One of my coworkers at Jakes has been catering for 30 years. He has persistant shooting pains traveling from his right hand to his right elbow which are a direct consequence of carrying heavy trays over and over and over again. But, without health insurance, there’s little he can do to treat his injury.

Another point that really hit home after talking with this man was that panhandling is a lifestyle choice. Perhaps not in cities like Los Angeles where social services do not provide much support for the poor, but in liberal cities like Portland where there are plenty of agencies who provide for the needy, someone panhandles because they choose to. One can some obvious examples of this walking past Powell’s books on Burnside. There’s often a woman who juggles balls and scarves or a man who wears punk clothes with patches and has a cat on a leash. I would guess that these young people come from relatively stable and prosperous families but are attracted to the idea of floating around from city to city, living hand-to-mouth and day-to-day. These are the Kerouacian panhandlers. My buddy Ben informed me that they are called ‘Crusties.’ Once winter and its attendant rains arrive they quickly disappear from the streets, probably back to their parent’s basements.

Eat your Hearts Out

Consumption is a topic that I’ve discussed on this blog before. Consumption is an important topic here and now for several reasons. Firstly, because we are Westerners and Americans we are consumers so it is important to define our consumption niche. Companies court us with their advertisements every day to try to get us to consume their brand of goods. It’s nice to know what brands fit your own personal sense of culture and style so that, even if you are giving in to the consumer-commodity culture you are doing so intentionally and with a purpose. Secondly, consuming well is important to good health. If you consume too little you can become weak, meager, and dull. If you consume too much you can become corpulent, unhealthy, and physically and emotionally dependant on the materials you consume.

I was at a dinner party a few days ago and a friend mentioned that he was eating more than usual, that his appetite seemed insatiable in recent weeks. Several other people in the room commented that this was the case for them as well. It was postulated by the group that this increase in appetite coincided with the weather turning colder. We decided that, perhaps, everyone eats more in the winter. We all put on a protective layer of flubber for the winter months. Our holiday menus reflect this habit. Thanksgiving is full of fattening foods like pumpkin pies, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Christmas is also a fat man’s dream with lots of baked goods, cinnamon buns, and stocking stuffers filled with jelly beans, rolos, and other amazing, teeth rotting substances.

Perhaps this urge to pork out in the winter is embedded in our genetic code. It was the monkeys who were able to increase their caloric intake and put on a protective layer of fat that were able to survive the winter months. Those skinny, Paris Hilton-esque monkeys must have died off pretty quickly once the first frost hit. However, this might only apply to those who live in a climate that gets cold in the winter. Southern Californians are doomed to be tanned and thin all year round. You poor bastards.


Since I’m no longer a college student (well technically its been 11 months since I’ve been enrolled in school but I’m still basking in the afterglow god-dammit!). I’ve been trying to be a little more discriminating with my consumption patterns. It’s nice to have one’s own tastes and preferences and stick to them. My friend Wolf is a perfect example of someone who knows what he likes and sticks to it. He drinks Whiskey and smokes spliffs and rarely strays from those habits. I respect someone who doesn’t have the attitude that any commodity of any variety will suffice as long as it fills your stomach or gets you ‘fucked up.’

I try to drink good beer when I drink beer. Being in Oregon is great for this habit since we have such an amazing selection of microbrews. Along with drinking nice beer should come an increased knowledge of what one is drinking. I want to know what the difference between a port, lager, and a stout is. I’ve also bought a book on bartending and mixed drinks which I hope will inform me more about the world of spirits. Despite this I am still intimidated to order a mix drink at a bar unless I am sure exactly what it’s ingredients are.

Last week I went to a sake tasting and sampled several varieties of the drink which, this is news to me, is traditionally served cold. I would like to take some tours of distilleries and breweries in Portland if anyone elese is interested. Eventually I might even get around to food and cook a meal one of these days!

I think my musings about food and consumption have been motivated by my employemt in the food and hospitality industry. At Jake’s we serve some expensive and rarified foods such as salmon with dungeonesse crab, oysters on a half shell, pork belly with bean cassoulet, and crème anglais (fancy word for ice cream) with seasonal berries. As a server I get to sample all of it. Some of it is great and some of it isn’t. The people who have been serving at Jakes the longest complain about the food the most. “Not stuffed salmon again, I’m so sick of that.” When you consume a luxury almost every day it ceases to be a luxury and starts to be a chore.

I have analyzed my own pattern of consumption using the handy device that I call ‘my portable psycho-analyzer.’ I have noticed that I really enjoy giving myself what I like to call ‘treats.’ In Spanish the word for dessert is ‘postre.’ It has the word-root post meaning afterwords. I enjoy food or drink when I perceive it as an extra or as something in addition to the merely sufficient. Rarely do I eat dinner and then not think, “hmmm, what else can I enjoy?” Whether this be a beer, an ice cream, some chocolate, or a smoke depends on the night. I like the word postre and its accompanying connotations better than dessert. The word dessert makes me think of someone getting ‘their just desert’. It brings to mind the idea that we deserve dessert or that it is part of the ordinary, necessary, and sufficient. I prefer to think of it as living in beautiful excess. The postre is a sign of culture and a symbol of a life of leisure.

A Loving Hate

There’s a band I like called She Wants Revenge. Their most famous song is called ‘Tear you apart.’ The lyrics discuss the ways in which the lead singer is going to literally tear an unnamed woman apart. The refrain of the song goes something like this, “I want to hold you close, soft breath beating heart, as I whisper in your ear, I want to fucking tear you apart.”

Undoubtedly the song has violent undertones. Many people have complained about the song’s lyrics. They assert that, beyond being violent, the song is also misogynistic, in that it encourages violence towards women. I, however, have a different interpretation of the song. I think the urge to tear the woman apart that the singer expresses is not a violent urge but a sexual urge and it is an urge that the singer feels but would never literally follow through with.

I would argue that the urge to rip his lover asunder is a product of the attraction the singer feels to the woman rather than any sort of antipathy. I think most people have had feelings similar to what the singer describes. Freud defined our most basic motivators to action as eros and thanatos, love and hate. They are not bipolarities but are actually closely related in the human psyche. When we feel really passionate about someone being physically close or intimate doesn’t seem to be enough. Our passionate feelings boil over into violent ones. The urge to rip your partner apart, to tear them asunder, to claw them into shreds is a common emotion. In Punch Drunk Love Adam Sandler’s character expresses his love by saying that Freud when he stated that love and hate are closely related and are drawn from the same force. They are both primal passions. It is an almost inevitable seek more and more personal and intense ways to express our love. Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thorton both famously carried vials of each other’s blood around in order to express their love. It is a common practice among close friends to commemorate a friendship by trading blood. Some people get tattoos of their lovers names engraved on them. It is as if these people are proving their devotion through a rite of pain.

Along with a desire for pain we also have a desire to be subsumed. By subsumption I mean this as a process where we lose our own ego feelings. We lose our ideas of ourselves and our ability to rationally process thoughts. We become one with our exteriority. Freud referred to this as the feeling of the sublime which he called “oceanic” in nature. I knew a woman who told me that when she has sex she likes to literally be pressed so hard that she cannot breath. This is an expression of the desire to lose oneself in the passion of the moment.. In the famous Greek work on love, ‘The Symposium’ one character describes a myth in which, back in the misty annals of time, men and women were fused together at the hip. These joint creatures had both sets of genetalia. The act of sex, according to this myth, is our attempt to recombine into our original configuration. No matter how hard we push and shove and try to squeeze ourselves back together, the link is doomed to be incomplete and ephemeral. I always liked this image of two people futilely rubbing against each other in an attempt to create something that has been lost forever. As single human beings we have definite physical and emotional boundaries, walls which act as boundaries between us and the rest of the world. But, during sex those boundaries are partially dissolved.