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82nd Avenue - Avenue of the Roses
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5 reviews for 82nd Avenue - Avenue of the Roses
So now we're apparently writing reviews of streets. Cool.
82nd Ave is the best example of suburban sprawl probably in the entire state. In just a few miles, there are innumerable strip malls, a regular mall, a few movie theaters, grocery stores, and Blaze: The Romance Superstore.
That's hot.
82nd Avenue, Portland, Oregon. The not-so-aptly-named Avenue of the Roses (why? Your guess is as good as mine). State Hwy 213. This street runs N--S along the eastern edge of Portland. 81st Avenue is Portland, 83rd Avenue is "the other side of the tracks".
There's never a dull moment on 82nd avenue. This is the classic transitional strip of used car lots, 24-hour fast food joints, skeezy crack-house motels, smoky diners, seedy bars, crusty strip joints, check-cashing loan sharks, filthy dirty Mexican restaurants, numerous ghetto fabulous Wal-Marts, Chinese restaurants, crappy apartments, transmission shops, trannies, and hookers. Anything you need, any time of day, even if it's just sheer entertainment, 82nd is the place.
Every city has one. In Seattle, for example, it's the Hwy 99/Aurora Ave corridor. All of the businesses and activities that the middle class folks don't want in their backyard come here. It looks dirty, it smells dirty, and it's well contained. A few blocks in either direction, and you're back in regular old Portland. But 82nd, and the little bubble around it, are in a different world altogether.
This area used to be a "prostitution free zone", a special exclusionary zone, because there was SO MUCH prostitution going on here. Did that work? No. Not at all. I drive home from work/class on this street between Glisan and Division every night, and I see AT LEAST one hooker each evening... at least one.
Need a used car of questionable history and value? Want to purchase an automobile from a dealer that won't be in existence next week? Need some crack? How about some over-sized 4x4 rims? Maybe a gigantic Chinese marble statue of a lion? Gee, maybe you need some dirty hooker sex? No? Ok, how about some dim sum and heroin? How about a 6 am Bud Light and heart-stopper bacon/cheese/sausage/egg/potato scramble from the Toc? 82nd has everything you could never want, and more.
82nd will never die. We could kill it 1,000 times and it would simply rise from its ashes, even more skanky than last time. 82nd is like your meth-head cousin... the one who keeps screwing up, relapsing, stealing your aunt's tv to buy more meth, and is always really, really sleazy, but the family likes to keep him nearby in case they need him. That's 82nd. "It's kind of an embarrassment, so we'll just put it about 82 blocks outside of downtown. Hey, maybe it will scare away the people from Gresham?"
The traffic on this street is always terrible. For some reason, this is the one street in Portland that people refuse to EVEN GO THE SPEED LIMIT. It's like a slow-motion annoying-ass time warp.
I live here. I live within 1,000 feet of this divine boulevard. If the "prostitution free zone" still existed, I would be living within its boundaries.
Jealous?
Oh you know it!
WTF is up with people just walking out in front of my car on this street? Oh yeah there are only like 3 cross walks on this entire strip of road! Even if there were more crosswalks people would still be too lazy to use them because it's like every other day that I nearly hit some one walking out into the street 15 feet away from a crosswalk. What can you expect though, everyone in Portland jaywalks, even the Police (yes, I did see this today)
I swear I was thinking about reviewing 82nd today.. no joke.
I think everybody should cruise 82nd at least once, just to soak in the atmoshpere. It's the main drag of Felony Flats.
It's the One-Stop Shopping Supercenter of the Portland underworld...much in the tradition of Fred Meyer. Gotta dig it...GOTTA.
