Current Issue :: 2007 October 12, 2007 :: Vendor News
Changing times on the Hawthorne turf
Bill Yates has been watching Hawthorne Boulevard for six years. That’s how long he has been selling Street Roots on Hawthorne
Boulevard at 37th Avenue, and in that time he’s seen the area
grow from a small, friendly neighborhood with a vibrant street life
into one of Portland’s most fashionable spots, full of pricey
restaurants and freshly sprouted condominiums.
Now there are two chain coffee shops across the street from one another at the intersection where Bill works, but he remembers when one of them was still a small imports store. He can name many of the people who used to own businesses on this stretch of Hawthorne and the people who lived nearby, and he can tell you what happened to each of them. As the neighborhood became more popular, developers bought property and raised rents, and a lot of the people Bill knew had to move out.
The old neighborhood as Bill describes it was lively and musical: “You’d hear a guy playing guitar on one block, a guy playing a violin on the next block, a guy playing a horn on down the way. It was a nice, friendly, open atmosphere. That’s what attracted young people.” He points out a house around the corner where a group of musicians used to live, before the building was sold and their rent skyrocketed. He thinks people were drawn to Hawthorne because “it was just a real nice, homey neighborhood with nice people on the street. Well-to-do people saw that and wanted that kind of street life.”
Once people actually move to the neighborhood, though, “they see the panhandlers and want to get rid of them.” After hearing complaints from residents, Bill says, police and business owners started chasing people off the street. All of a sudden, the sidewalk culture that had pulled people in began to die down, which Bill thinks is a direct result of efforts to “clean up” the neighborhood. “They want it the way it was,” he says, “but they don’t understand that sometimes the panhandlers are just the musicians who didn’t bring their instruments.”
He also thinks that businesses are doing themselves a disservice by running people off the street. “You didn’t used to have to lock your door,” he says, because if there’s a musician or panhandler outside, “no one’s going to rob your store.” Bill knows of several neighborhood businesses that have been burglarized recently, and he thinks they would have been safer with someone on the street to keep watch.
The changing demographic of Hawthorne has been interesting for Bill: “Some of the newcomers are really nice people,” he says, and “a lot of the new people I meet, I like.” Despite the rising tide of the neighborhood, though, Bill’s paper sales have declined significantly over the past several years. He suspects this is partly due to everyone’s growing cost of living, but he has also noticed a different attitude in many of the new residents. Now, he says, when he greets passersby to offer them a paper, half of them “won’t even look at me.”
Plenty of Bill’s friends, both old and new, still stop on the sidewalk to chat with him, and there is still the occasional street vendor or musician to suggest the neighborhood’s previous incarnation. With the continuing development of the area, though, Bill wonders how long all that will last. “It hasn’t changed so much that I want to change spots,” he says, “but I imagine that time might come.”
It may be possible for Hawthorne to grow and change without stamping out its street culture entirely, but it will take some effort and openness. Bill remembers one man who used to panhandle in the area before police forced him out — he dressed in camouflage and had a big beard, which Bill says “scared the hell out of people.” As soon as they found out he was a veteran who hadn’t been receiving proper benefits, though, everyone became much more interested in helping him. “If people would just get involved,” Bill says, “rather than trying to run him out of the neighborhood, things would be better for everyone.”
In the end, it’s not so much about business as friendship for Bill.
I just want to let all of my customers — my new friends and the ones who have always been out there with us — know that I really appreciate their friendship.”
