News
Celebrating the grit and humanity of Old Town
In this series, Street Roots looks back at the history and diverse voices of Old Town Portland. Old Town: 'The original downtown' Street Roots reflects on some of the characters that made Old Town what it was – and is today When Old Town was the North End A snapshot of a few blocks of Portland’s…
The Portland IWW: Revolution and music
Since Portland’s earliest days, the neighborhood now known as Old Town has been the place for the transient, the homeless and the unwanted. Portland’s most racially mixed neighborhood before 1919, the North End was the home to Chinese, Japanese, African-American, Gypsy and other immigrant Portlanders. Oregon’s economy was built on migrant labor, and the city’s…
Portland’s Old Town/Chinatown: ‘The original downtown’
From the rooftop patio of The Society Hotel, guests can relax and enjoy a fine cocktail high above the complex intersection of Northeast Third Avenue and Davis Street. To the south is a Japanese tea shop, an echo of Japantown, one of the neighborhood’s many historic identities. To the east is C.C. Slaughters and Darcelle…
Vendor Profiles
Street Roots vendor profile: A poet in our midst
The poems arrive on crumpled sheets of scrap paper, folded and refolded, pulled from deep inside the front pocket hoody. With a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous smile, he passes them across the front counter of the vendor office, like diamonds wrapped in rags. Daniel is a natural wordsmith, a shy craftsman, a…
Housing
Retirements prompt mass eviction at affordable refuge in downtown Portland
Every Christmas, the tenants of the Lincoln Hotel receive a tin of shortbread cookies, given to them by their longtime landlord. They received the tin, as usual, this year. They also got an eviction notice. The 30 tenants of the Lincoln Hotel, a 30-unit single resident occupancy (SRO) hotel on Southwest Morrison Street and 10th…
Opinion
SR editorial: Time for Oregon Legislature to discuss rent stabilization
We cannot build our way out of our housing crisis. The free market will always cleave to profits as high as the market can bear. And in a city as desirable as Portland, regardless of periodic lulls, the market ratchets upward with each season. We need statewide action – forged from honest debates about what…
Culture
2 books that explore Big Pharma’s role in the opioid crisis
Dope-wasted in Lee County, Va., a disconsolate farmer told his physician that the powerful prescription drug OxyContin had destroyed his life. He had lost everything. Another Virginian, an unemployed miner, admitted OxyContin had become more important than friends, family, children or church: “It became my god.” OxyContin — the lucrative product of Purdue Pharma of…
