Someone has to pay. Those who benefit - whether they be those attending, participating, or the businesses - should shoulder the load. At least some of it.
I'm proud to support local artists. I am a local artist.
This event, however, is mostly about booze and mayhem AFTER the vendors are closing up and going home.
That's the point. It isn't a free gathering. The event has been marked by repeated problems the last years. Violence, vandalism, noise, trash, public urination, etc. When the neighbors have to spend the night trying to keep the drunks from using our properties as toilets and trash bins, it's clear that there is a cost. The city is providing port-o-potties (with mixed success), expending police resources, and other security measures. All so a bunch of drunk kids from the suburbs can go "tear it up in the 'hood!" (versions of this quote are heard every last thursday). The event needs to be shut down or rules need to be enforced.
Public urination and worse may not be happening in the middle of the event, but it is happening on the residential side streets.
The event became a problem in recent years. The people, myself included, that have an issue with it didn't just show up last summer and ask "who are these people?" We've lived here for a number of years and are investing in the community. The event is no longer a neighborhood event and as the neighborhood doesn't want it, it should go. Everything has an expiration date.
The event helped launch the street, but it has outgrown itself. What used to be a small artsy street festival has been replaced with a monthly reenactment of Mardi Gras. More people show up AFTER the vendors are closing up and leaving. They show up to get drunk and make a mess in someone else's neighborhood - my neighborhood.
How hard are these tests that he failed *twice*?
I've driven and ridden all over the country - from New Orleans to DC to NY to California to Chicago and so on.. Where other drivers are indeed aggressive, that aggression requires that you pay attention, at least a little bit. Portland drivers, being of the fair minded and rule following kind, substitute that sense of order for knowing what's going on around them.
The law isn't stacked. There is a long history of bicyclists being seriously injured or killed because of a motorists negligence and the driver getting off essentially with little more than a minor traffic ticket.
But then Portland drivers are amongst the worst I've ever experienced.
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