Thread by @robertgraham

I took a long walk around downtown Portland today to check out the post apocalyptic landscape. I don't want to just point the camera at boarded up buildings -- here you can see non-boarded-up businesses across the street from boarded up ones.

It's hard to say which is worse, the pandemic lockdowns or the constant riots breaking windows, but large parts are taking it hard.

Some of the boarded up buildings are proactive to prevent damage, others are boarded up because their windows got smashed, such as this Starbucks, with boards replacing broken windows, but other windows uncovered.

The most famous part of the riots were when Trump sent in troops to protect the Mark O. Hatfield federal building in downtown. You can see how it's boarded up and fenced off now. In front of the building there is a park...

Here's another view of the building through the park. The park has been trashed, the fountain destroyed, and a famous statue of an elk removed for self keeping. It's now an encampment.

Much of Portland is now an encampment. There's random tents everywhere throughout the city. Some are homeless who have always live there, some are from out of town coming for the nightly "protests".

Some seem more deliberate "camping" rather than "homeless camps", especially out of downtown on the other side of the river in more pleasant spaces to setup.

This route near the river water has a lot of "BUMP" warnings that have been converted to "KILL TRUMP" messages -- except one escaped the original graffitist's attention, which was addressed by a later graffitist.

Besides the broken windows in businesses, there's a lot of trash everywhere. I saw a lady in a city uniform doing the normal street cleaning, picking up trash in the street, while ignoring the piles on the sidewalk near the tents.

This guy seems to have a thriving business repairing bicycles.

I do a disservice pointing the camera only at bad things. What you don't see is how on this Saturday morning, the promenades and bridges on the waterfront are full of people out exercising

There's a steady stream of people up and down both sides of the river and across the bridges. So it's not as if the city has shut down -- at least, not during the day. I'm told people avoid the roving gangs of "protesters" at night.