Drew is a Portland native and, in many ways, a man of the world.
“I grew up in Portland and Albuquerque,” Drew said. “I lived here until I was 18, and then I socialized in New Mexico a little bit. I saved up my money ’cause grunge at the time was big and Portland was rapidly starting to lose its grittiness and its realness, so I decided to see other places. When you grow up somewhere, you think the world revolves around that place.”
Not that Albuquerque was as far as he got. He’s traveled throughout Europe, staying with former exchange students he knew. He spent weeks in Paris, Poland, Germany, Belgium and beyond.
“You tell people this, and they get jealous,” he said.
I immediately told him that I was jealous.
Our conversation soon moved to more immediate and less aspirational topics, such as the nature of living outside.
“Homelessness is both a physical condition and mental condition,” Drew said. “I found out it’s a sensation more than anything. Anywhere I lay my head is my home. I think that that’s very true, it’s a semantic issue. What is a home? A house is a roof over your head, but what is your home? Is that person living in a tent with people they consider a family really homeless or houseless? Other languages would say that we are houseless – we are in a condition of houslessness.
“I took enough sociology classes to know that playing the lottery and smoking cigarettes are symptoms of poverty. Or are they symptoms? Or are they a result? The lottery gives you hope – you have hope when you play that, and it gets you through the week. Are people just defending these things that are antiquated? Maybe we’ve evolved a little bit and found out more about the human condition and it doesn’t have to be a cycle of homelessness? These things get codified and put into textbooks and locked in and that’s how it’s gotta be,” Drew said.
“I’m just wondering about how locked in people are to their idea about how things are or should be and how far they’re willing to go to defend a negative attitude towards the human condition.”
While he has what could be described as a realist’s view, Drew is not all doom and gloom. We discuss what an ally would look like with the houseless community.
“A person that doesn’t sneer at a homeless person,” he said. “A person that has compassion, and understands that homeless people aren’t homeless because they want to be homeless. People like to fool themselves into believing that’s what a person wants.“
Drew returned to Portland in January and has been selling Street Roots since then.
“I’d always supported Street Roots but never had – I’d always been able to find a job relatively quickly,” he said. “Before, I would always give my jingling change to a Street Roots vendor. You take it all because you’re doing something I like. John Waters is on the cover, I’ll buy a copy.”
Drew said that at Street Roots, “vendors are trying – they’re trying to be autonomous, they’re trying to be independent.”
Like many Street Roots vendors, Drew is seeking housing. He has a business plan too.
“They should make a zoo for native Portlanders,” he said. “We’ll have loggers and fishermen there.”
You can find Drew on his turf near Stumptown on Southeast 45th Avenue and Division Street.