Aug 13, 2023·edited Aug 13, 2023Liked by Pamela Fitzsimmons
When life and necessity brought me to Delta Park/Hayden Meadows I kept in mind Jim Mattis' adjuration: Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.
I used to go to what became the Chef's Store kitty corner to the recently deceased Walmart. Really good prices. One day I swung in and a man was posted at the door to warn customers. Seems a thieving dope feed had visited their clientele an hour before and smashed the windows out of half a dozen cars and grabbed what loot an enterprising bicyclist could grab. So much more Portland than Voodoo Donuts, don't you think?
I worked security at Portland Meadows, the horse track for a couple years, too. Emptying the machines of an evening there could be twenty grand in greenbacks in the hands of the fellow closing them out. I was unarmed security. Of course, I kept my head on a swivel so that I might get a head start on any serious villain come to stick us up. Oddly, it never happened. The drum messaging mustn't have been as effective as of yore. Thank god. Take the drums and hoops and distribute the handhelds.
The ingenuity and perseverance of dope fiends. Wait like a peckish vulture until a gambler tips her chair forward and makes a quick trip to the head. Swoop in and grab her old tickets and print the current winner, cash them in and bolt. Shoot dope in the Men's? My first fistfight in 45 years. Wasn't even close. I mean dope fiends might think that they are tough, but they are well. . . dope fiends. Short on stamina and the old hand eye. Watch for the blade. Always.
Cheap fellatio abounding! Christ, I went after one thief who must have been pushing 50 but his fence scaling every bit the equal of a young Burt Lancaster or a Mr Hyde were his britches on fire.
Oh yes, scum of the earth always ready to launch down that way. The Bottle Drop Center, made you wish for a brief visit from Tibbets or LeMay.
I'd heard the shooter was in big trouble by the next morning. I couldn't believe he'd pulled a gun, well I believed it but.
One night while working at an adjacent truck stop I called the cops on a fast and violent Punjabi far gone on meth and way past desperate. The cops, older male, very young female, caught up with Hari Lightning and tried to discuss with him his conduct. As the subcontinent ain't of much renown in the boxing line I was really surprised by the fellow's choice of reply. He ate some asphalt and was cuffed. No blood or abrasions. A sergeant showed up as if he'd been waiting in the wings and began interviewing and recording the two officers, the drug mad, and me. Force had been used you see.
I always lied to my supervisor. Oregon is very strict about the deployment of chemical weapons as deadly as pepper spray. Moreover, if and when you ...generally, the combination works and your life is quieter, safer, more prone to civility
I hope you’re working on a book, Larry. You see a side of Portland that readers of Chuck Palahniuk and Katherine Dunn might appreciate. I wonder what Dunn would make of Portland in 2023. When she worked as a bartender, she had to deal with fiends under the influence armed with knives.
Aug 7, 2023·edited Aug 7, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton
Will PoniaX the maniac be added to the list of BIPOC martyrs of alleged police violence who will be celebrated by white antifa types marching through a neighborhood near you with their long guns and traffic-snarling "corkers" demanding racial justice?
Aug 7, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton, Pamela Fitzsimmons
Excellent job of exposing, the only lightly disguised, hypocrisy of the left. OPB is as liberal and biased as they come despite their constant self promotion as fair and unbiased journalism.
The death of any human being is a tragedy, but to paint completely aggressive individuals with extensive criminal backgrounds as the victims when they make aggressive moves with dangerous weapons, including motor vehicles, is in itself a crime against humanity.
The chances of Portland voters coming to their senses any time soon, is slim at best. Keep up the good work of presenting unvarnished facts, and opinions which ring true to the responsible people who read your comments.
It truly is a shame how far OPB has fallen, they really need to have an ombudsman like they used to have, I am not sure why that role was eliminated. I was a 20+ year member that cancelled my membership after the coverage of 2020. I am a liberal, but even I could see that casting one group of protesters as "Trump supporters" or "far right protesters" while implying the other street gang as "anti-fascist protesters" was putting the finger on the scale of public sentiment, rather than just referring to them as left and right wing protester groups. This may have been a minor thing given the insanity of NPR programming during that time, but this type of editorializing was from vaunted local reporters who to this day enjoy a veneer of unearned objectivity.
During most of my adult life, I supported the NPR affiliate where ever I lived. When I returned to the Portland area about a dozen years ago, I immediately signed up with OPB. By 2020, I had cancelled my membership.
Amid all the negative national media attention Portland has been receiving, one contributing fact is frequently left out: This city has weak local media that cater to the progressive viewpoint. No wonder Measure 110 passed. No wonder we have a DA like Mike Schmidt.
One of the worst examples of OPB’s smugness was five years ago when The Oregonian’s “conservative” columnist Elizabeth Hovde wrote about Joey Gibson and failed to denounce him. Portland-area journalists pounced, especially OPB’s Anna Griffin. I wrote about that pile-on here:
Earlier this year, Griffin was still referring to the 2020 protests as mostly peaceful.
When OPB’s Rebecca Ellis left a few months ago to work for the L.A. Times, she was replaced by The Portland Mercury’s Alex Zielinski, who now enjoys that “veneer of unearned objectivity.”
The question is why do private businesses feel compelled to hire private armed security? It’s is due to the failures of people like Mike Schmidt and his wife Clare Schmidt. Then people like Gimbel get put in unwinnable situations and make a split second decision and are sentenced to life in prison. Wow.
Excellent article!! So good!! The hypocrisy of places like OPB is nauseating.
And the hypocrisy of race issues as well. Smallwood was white, his killer black, so who gives a shit, right? Had the killer been white and the victim black, all hell woulda broke loose. Can you imagine the chaos?
This is why so many people in Portland don’t take Black Lives Matter seriously at all. The hypocrisy of the movement is a joke. BLM does NOTHING for black people except make the owner Patrisse Cullors a millionaire with FIVE mansion homes. This from a woman who said she was a Marxist and would live in poverty.
Wow. Thank you for this article. Poignant. Well written. And depressing. I hope all Portlanders read this. Truth like this is the only thing that could possibly save Portland from itself.
I hope Gimbel appeals. And they have to move the trial out of Multnomah County. You can't get a fair trial in Portland. I was on a jury recently. The blatant and loudly professed bias of fellow jurors was shocking to me.
When life and necessity brought me to Delta Park/Hayden Meadows I kept in mind Jim Mattis' adjuration: Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.
I used to go to what became the Chef's Store kitty corner to the recently deceased Walmart. Really good prices. One day I swung in and a man was posted at the door to warn customers. Seems a thieving dope feed had visited their clientele an hour before and smashed the windows out of half a dozen cars and grabbed what loot an enterprising bicyclist could grab. So much more Portland than Voodoo Donuts, don't you think?
I worked security at Portland Meadows, the horse track for a couple years, too. Emptying the machines of an evening there could be twenty grand in greenbacks in the hands of the fellow closing them out. I was unarmed security. Of course, I kept my head on a swivel so that I might get a head start on any serious villain come to stick us up. Oddly, it never happened. The drum messaging mustn't have been as effective as of yore. Thank god. Take the drums and hoops and distribute the handhelds.
The ingenuity and perseverance of dope fiends. Wait like a peckish vulture until a gambler tips her chair forward and makes a quick trip to the head. Swoop in and grab her old tickets and print the current winner, cash them in and bolt. Shoot dope in the Men's? My first fistfight in 45 years. Wasn't even close. I mean dope fiends might think that they are tough, but they are well. . . dope fiends. Short on stamina and the old hand eye. Watch for the blade. Always.
Cheap fellatio abounding! Christ, I went after one thief who must have been pushing 50 but his fence scaling every bit the equal of a young Burt Lancaster or a Mr Hyde were his britches on fire.
Oh yes, scum of the earth always ready to launch down that way. The Bottle Drop Center, made you wish for a brief visit from Tibbets or LeMay.
I'd heard the shooter was in big trouble by the next morning. I couldn't believe he'd pulled a gun, well I believed it but.
One night while working at an adjacent truck stop I called the cops on a fast and violent Punjabi far gone on meth and way past desperate. The cops, older male, very young female, caught up with Hari Lightning and tried to discuss with him his conduct. As the subcontinent ain't of much renown in the boxing line I was really surprised by the fellow's choice of reply. He ate some asphalt and was cuffed. No blood or abrasions. A sergeant showed up as if he'd been waiting in the wings and began interviewing and recording the two officers, the drug mad, and me. Force had been used you see.
I always lied to my supervisor. Oregon is very strict about the deployment of chemical weapons as deadly as pepper spray. Moreover, if and when you ...generally, the combination works and your life is quieter, safer, more prone to civility
I hope you’re working on a book, Larry. You see a side of Portland that readers of Chuck Palahniuk and Katherine Dunn might appreciate. I wonder what Dunn would make of Portland in 2023. When she worked as a bartender, she had to deal with fiends under the influence armed with knives.
For the latest OPB lunacy, see these from today:
A new network of hate groups in the Pacific Northwest targets smaller Pride festivals
Bomb threat shuts down OHSU clinic after anti-trans information posted online
....both slim on facts, long on innuendo.
Meanwhile--further proof that Pam is journalism's last great voice in Portland.
OPB, really evil. Of course, they think themselves the good guys.
It's a cliche by now, but why not?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
Will PoniaX the maniac be added to the list of BIPOC martyrs of alleged police violence who will be celebrated by white antifa types marching through a neighborhood near you with their long guns and traffic-snarling "corkers" demanding racial justice?
Excellent job of exposing, the only lightly disguised, hypocrisy of the left. OPB is as liberal and biased as they come despite their constant self promotion as fair and unbiased journalism.
The death of any human being is a tragedy, but to paint completely aggressive individuals with extensive criminal backgrounds as the victims when they make aggressive moves with dangerous weapons, including motor vehicles, is in itself a crime against humanity.
The chances of Portland voters coming to their senses any time soon, is slim at best. Keep up the good work of presenting unvarnished facts, and opinions which ring true to the responsible people who read your comments.
It truly is a shame how far OPB has fallen, they really need to have an ombudsman like they used to have, I am not sure why that role was eliminated. I was a 20+ year member that cancelled my membership after the coverage of 2020. I am a liberal, but even I could see that casting one group of protesters as "Trump supporters" or "far right protesters" while implying the other street gang as "anti-fascist protesters" was putting the finger on the scale of public sentiment, rather than just referring to them as left and right wing protester groups. This may have been a minor thing given the insanity of NPR programming during that time, but this type of editorializing was from vaunted local reporters who to this day enjoy a veneer of unearned objectivity.
During most of my adult life, I supported the NPR affiliate where ever I lived. When I returned to the Portland area about a dozen years ago, I immediately signed up with OPB. By 2020, I had cancelled my membership.
Amid all the negative national media attention Portland has been receiving, one contributing fact is frequently left out: This city has weak local media that cater to the progressive viewpoint. No wonder Measure 110 passed. No wonder we have a DA like Mike Schmidt.
One of the worst examples of OPB’s smugness was five years ago when The Oregonian’s “conservative” columnist Elizabeth Hovde wrote about Joey Gibson and failed to denounce him. Portland-area journalists pounced, especially OPB’s Anna Griffin. I wrote about that pile-on here:
https://www.heldtoanswer.com/2018/11/the-media-gaslight-themselves/
Hovde’s column ceased about five months later.
Earlier this year, Griffin was still referring to the 2020 protests as mostly peaceful.
When OPB’s Rebecca Ellis left a few months ago to work for the L.A. Times, she was replaced by The Portland Mercury’s Alex Zielinski, who now enjoys that “veneer of unearned objectivity.”
That was a very good column.
Those bottle drop sites are wastelands of dirt bag drug zombies and criminals. I’ll never set foot in one.
The question is why do private businesses feel compelled to hire private armed security? It’s is due to the failures of people like Mike Schmidt and his wife Clare Schmidt. Then people like Gimbel get put in unwinnable situations and make a split second decision and are sentenced to life in prison. Wow.
Excellent article!! So good!! The hypocrisy of places like OPB is nauseating.
And the hypocrisy of race issues as well. Smallwood was white, his killer black, so who gives a shit, right? Had the killer been white and the victim black, all hell woulda broke loose. Can you imagine the chaos?
This is why so many people in Portland don’t take Black Lives Matter seriously at all. The hypocrisy of the movement is a joke. BLM does NOTHING for black people except make the owner Patrisse Cullors a millionaire with FIVE mansion homes. This from a woman who said she was a Marxist and would live in poverty.
Laughable.
Wow. Thank you for this article. Poignant. Well written. And depressing. I hope all Portlanders read this. Truth like this is the only thing that could possibly save Portland from itself.
I hope Gimbel appeals. And they have to move the trial out of Multnomah County. You can't get a fair trial in Portland. I was on a jury recently. The blatant and loudly professed bias of fellow jurors was shocking to me.
Great article, i wish more people would read it.
You and me both, brother.