Sep 10, 2025
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It's another preternaturally warm & sunny day in Portland!
Gonzaga District set to receive 60 additional student-housing units
Gonzaga District set to receive 60 additional student-housing units
This lot, at 940 N Ruby, is set to be transformed into a major 60-unit apartment complex aimed at Gonzaga University students. (PHOTO: Google Street View)
A California-based developer is getting ready to start construction on a 60-unit apartment complex aimed at Gonzaga studentsbut otherwise unaffiliated with the university. At 940 N Ruby, he will construct a five-story building with surface…
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A Colorful Sound in Chicago
A Colorful Sound in Chicago
Sometimes I don’t wear my glasses and I don’t wear my contacts because I’m
sick of seeing all the beautiful people in my city. They make me feel green as I listen to
their silky shirts lick their skin and the hollow yet echoing sound from a woman’s shoes.
Four days out of seven I am on this magnificent mile where these beautiful people will
walk past me and run into me and bump into me and step on me and forget me. I’ll just
stop walking on the sidewalk to get anyone’s attention, but nothing. As I watch them,
they all shimmer like smoke as they walk in rhythm I can’t find. What if I took a
stethoscope and placed it on them so I can count the beats that allow them to live? I need
to hear the sound of someone else’s life drumming in my eardrums like a Killers song. A
sound that renders an F sharp stings me and then I realize something. I have ten minutes
before my shift starts so I run past them as cotton sticks on my skin while my black hair
slaps my shoulders and face.
After the employee entrance I have four flights of stairs to run up and for once I
am hot. By the time I make it to the top, my breath is jagged and my skin is glistening
from the stress and distractions. I punch in and start my work day, smile, and attempt to
speak. But my throat is dry, and I’m trying to greet these beautiful women and I can’t.
The words are tangled between the lining of my throat and the one wisdom tooth that
sneaks up from my gums, and is trapped by plaque. Usually I am good at talking to
complete strangers. I’m even better at convincing them to buy more merchandise they
don’t need to feed their habits that are aching all over their expensive bodies. I can roll
seven reasons as to why off my tongue like the Pledge of Allegiane. I can spot who will
actually buy things by the way they talk by the way they ignore me by the way they walk.I can hear the money through their voices. Most women sound like Daisy Buchanan on
the magnificent mile.
I hate the way these beautiful people treat me. Sometimes I’ll say a simple,
“Hello” and they will walk right past me. Those are the women that think they are better
than me. They don’t know that this is a job not by choice. They don’t know I am in
school. They don’t know I am graduating. And they don’t care. That’s when I look down
Magnificent Mile and see nothing magnificent on it and nothing magnificent about them.
The sky is no longer cloudy blue, but is beginning to bleed green and I’m falling like the
way the rain caresses the hardened tar on the ground and shrivels into beads of doubt.
I look at the clock and lunch is over.
Why is it that an hour for lunch feels like five minutes, but when I am clocked in for an
hour, it feels like five?
My voice may not sound like money, but it sounds like the envy of having
something you don’t and it invades their mind like cancer invading my mother’s body.
That’s the thing about these beautiful people, they are stupid. They are fluent in the
language of haughtiness and our dialects don’t match.
I see their insecurities as they put designer labels over their bodies to conceal them. But
these insecurities are wilting and the smell lingers and I take it in like freshly made
brownies.
They bait me with their fancy shoes, fancy jewelry, fancy clothes and sometimes
won’t buy a single thing, just to prove a point. That they control my paycheck. Because at
the end of the day I’m not winning. Man wasn’t born free Rousseau.
And the chipped pieces of my dignity are left at the bottom of their Jimmy Choos and they are off to get facials or fly to Paris or buy a car. I’ll look at the associate next to me
with a chocolate chip of hope in his smile and bills paid in his eyes as he rings up a 1200
dollar sale. But I know something he doesn’t or maybe something he convinces himself
not to believe, like the alcoholic who doesn’t have a problem. That all the stuff he sold is
coming back. Because that’s what we do. We convince, we sell, they rent. We rent
merchandise and working on commission sucks. Because when we get hit with returns; it
comes out of our paycheck.
Sometimes I fall asleep in my glasses so I can see in my dreams. But they are
filled with teardrops of blurred vivid colors. Everyone is camouflaged with grey, green,
and yellow. When I look at the sky, I see a blurry sun with a blazing white sky, and red
air that scorns my lungs like a forest fire. I hate that something so far has the potential to
graze me.
Shut the front door.
I just read that they are going to build a Target on Division & Larrabee (!!!) and it will open Fall 2013.
As a resident of DivSt. this is the best news ever.
Between the footsteps I hear crickets in the trees a silent army marching with me through a swarm of bees a needle dragged across a record slowing down along Division St. the lights were dying out endless rows of houses stretched on for miles and miles and miles...
Division St. -- Thursday