Life is often funny, sometimes aggravating, and every so often, frightening. I discovered a brand new element of fright on the morning of Thursday, May 25th, as I ventured through northeast Portland; 82nd Avenue to be specific. Now if you live in the Portland area, specifically northeast, you’ll know there’s stretches of 82nd that are sketchy looking but not worth too much worry, and then there are stretches where you’re better off locking your car doors, even when your car is moving. I was venturing through a fringe spot that was almost a purgatory between the two.
Why was I there?
Like so many concepts I come up with, I don’t remember at this point where the initial genesis came from, but all I know now is I have dived into something much larger than I planned. For anyone who’s been paying attention, the city of Portland is rapidly moving towards becoming the next San Francisco, a threat to thousands of the cities inhabitants who are barely getting by financially as it is. In the last couple years, in surrounding areas as well, the cost of living has skyrocketed, scaring many and sending many people packing for new pastures where they can actually afford to keep a roof over their heads. It’s really a two-piece problem. As thousands of new people have relocated to the Portland area, many with a little more money in their pockets than the average Portland native, developers have swarmed the city, snatching up any property they can, so long as the property comes cheap. Long gone around here are the days of buying a home and flipping it for maybe a $50,000 or perhaps a $100,000 profit. Today’s superior house flipper is not a house flipper at all but rather a destroyer and re-creator. In Portland developers find properties in the more poor parts of Portland (pretty much the eastern half of the city) that they often purchase for $300,000 or less. They then demolish the home on the property and construct a new home that they can sell from anywhere between $600,000 to $1,000,000. Some of these properties, especially if one can manage to build two or more new homes on the property, go for four or five times what was invested in it.
With these numerous properties going from affordable to overtly expensive, the cost of living has obviously been growing around Portland. The growing cost of living has also spread like wildfire through the rental community (again, the poor people). Apartments that cost $800 or so three years ago may cost $1,500+ today. These skyrocketing prices have made it practically impossible to find “affordable” apartments to live in as they’ve all been snatched up. Many of these apartments are overcrowded as well (I currently live in a two bedroom apartment in the Portland suburb of Gladstone and when I moved in there were four of us living here). And in response to this growing need for affordable house (more specifically, affordable apartments) we have seen an explosion of “flashy” (and not in a good way) lofts popping up in various neighborhoods. Along SE Division Street there are stretches where there are now three or four of these “lofts” over a course of three or four blocks. In north Portland along Williams Avenue there’s about an eight block stretch I walked where there were seven or eight new “loft” buildings constructed (and another currently under construction). These lofts, even the studio units, go seldom for less than $1,200-$1,500 a month (so you can imagine what a one or two bedroom unit would go for). These lofts are hardly being constructed to provide housing for those who really need it, but rather they are pandering to the newcomers to town whose pockets are a little deeper.
This all makes me fear greatly for the future of Portland and what the city will be like in the coming years. I’m 31-years old now and have never wanted to leave the Portland area. This is my home and I’ve always loved calling it my home. But with all that nostalgia, in even just recent months, I’ve began to ponder honestly how much longer I will be able to legitimately afford to live in my lifelong home. All these facts and feelings have powered me into a production on the housing/demolition crisis that has permeated the city. In recent weeks I have gathered extensive information and done some real intensive research so as to put together the overall structure of the film, which has many individuals sections to focus on in terms of understanding the overall purpose of the film and its motivations. In addition to this, I have made it my plan to traverse pretty much all of Portland to capture video in its various neighborhoods as well as, obviously, locations where demolitions have occurred or are underway. This in and of itself has been a serious undertaking as without a car and a lack of a particular bus line that travels the exact route I needed to take, much of this filming involved me hoofing it around town and after six or seven hours I may cover about twenty percent of just a given section of Portland.
I began shooting this film near the beginning of May. With a few days of shooting under my belt I accompanied my friend to work as I began at 7 am and my shift did not start until 11 am. This allowed me a couple hours to pick a specific space to cover and after a succession of days I would have all the film that I needed. It was the morning of March 25th, a Thursday to be exact. I had done the same thing on Tuesday, two days before. I went to work with my friend and ventured around Portland for a couple hours and it was a great experience. The weather was nice and I captured some great video considering my time restrictions. But Thursday was another thing…
I hoped onto the bus and travelled a little ways north of my workplace, which is in a mall space known as Eastport Plaza. Around 7:45 am I hoped off the bus when I saw what looked like an abandoned building. Wanting to capture all aspects of Portland it was nice to snap a few shots of a business following its collapse. And just to its east was an old closed down miniature golf course that was more or less just an overgrown grassy field surrounded by fences. I only shot for about ten minutes but already had captured several moody shots. I was also regretting wearing shorts as it was a little colder than it had been the past week and it was still overcast, which it hadn’t been in days. But I liked that as it provided a melancholic feel to these closed down locations.
I then walked a block north of the closed down golf course and crossed Skidmore Street where a long, unappealing building stood that too looked as if it had been closed down all together for a while. Several windows had been broken out and it looked as if there was no activity going on anywhere inside. It was as I reached the end of this building, where there was a small paved space followed by another long building that too looked unoccupied, that a man stepped up out of nowhere and cut right in front of me, practically stopping me dead in my tracks. He was an African American male with a shaved head and wandering eyes as though he didn’t know how to focus on anything. He stood with a slight hunch to his upper body that lingered over me as I am about 5 feet, 10 inches tall and this individual was, I’d say, approximately 6 feet, 2 inches tall. He wore a thick gray hoodie that had some form of cursive writing as a logo on it, I can’t really recall that well except that the letters had a red border around them. He was wearing those kinds of jeans where the denim has something of a sheen to them. And while I wasn’t paying much attention to his feet, my memory tells me that he was wearing black, gray and red Nikes. Almost before he spoke I had a feel for what might happen.
I had been stopped on the street many times like this, as Portland has a massive homeless population and people just come out of nowhere all the time. But no matter how threatening any of them may or may have not appeared, I was never threatened by any of them. Most of the time they just asked for money and if I didn’t have any, the worst they’d do is pressure me like they didn’t believe me. And even then they’d ultimately just take off when I didn’t give in or showed them proof that I had no money on me. This moment was different. This man cut in front of me and immediately began speaking in a deep, muttering voice that I almost couldn’t make out at first.
“Hey, here’s the deal. You’re gonna step up behind this building or I’m gonna fucking shoot you in the leg. I’ll fucking shoot you in the leg.”
For about ten seconds I thought I was going to die. I thought this guy was a derelict of some kind, probably mentally ill with that wavering look in his eyes. I thought he was going to take me behind this building and put a bullet in me without a care in the world. But fortunately, at least against the backdrop of my initial fear, I was only about to experience my first mugging.
My heart- well, I don’t really know what my heart was doing. I don’t know what happened at all within my body. I was, more or less, in a state of shock. My shock was so overwhelming that I behaved in sometimes an erratic manner that could have got me into more trouble with this guy who was clearly not in a stable place in his life whatsoever. For example, after agreeing openly to step back along the side of the building I instinctively put my hands up, as one would when a gun is pulled on them. This guy reacted to this aggressively by telling me to put my hands down and to be cool. The whole time he was playing the gimmick of making it look to passers by like we were just two guys talking passively. And somehow, even though it was 82nd Avenue, one of the busiest streets in Portland, it seemed as though not a single car passed by during that whole altercation.
I immediately knew this guy was going to take my camera for drug money. And had I not been, again, in this place of total shock I may have escaped with only losing that. After he demanded the camera and I handed it over he told me he needed a bag for it, but he wasn’t going to take my camera bag as, at the time, I think he figured it was jut a general backpack cause he thought I was a student of some kind. But he told me directly that he needed a bag to conceal the camera as he would have looked strange walking around that neighborhood with a camera around his neck. Had I had some kind of other bag or had I just flat out told him that I didn’t have another bag he might have just taken the camera as he was desperate, so it seemed, to get his hands on some cash so he could make his next score. But, like a dumbass, I opened my camera bag hoping to find something to wrap the camera in. He saw the interior of my bag and the fact that there was another lens in there, among other things, and he took the camera off his shoulders and told me to put it in the bag as he was going to take the camera and the bag, with its contents, in that moment.
But before he took the camera he, intriguingly, gave me his sob story about his sickness from being a heroin addict. And the only reason I disrespect his illness is, I’m sorry, but he took away my most prized possession without a care in the world. Because of that, I unfortunately have little to no sympathy for this man as he chose to threaten my very life and then take away what was the item that allowed me to do what I love more than anything. This guy made the conscious decision, for whatever reason, to become a drug addict. Perhaps he had a rough childhood, peer pressure, whatever it was. I’m sure this man had serious struggles in his past but what he did to me and the implications that it could have had on my life is something as unforgivable as anything I’ve ever experienced. And in the moment I was courteous and understanding as he explained to me that he was a heroin addict and that he had just used the last of his “shit” and was in desperate need to get more. He then straightforward said he was going to take my camera and pawn it off for moment. After that I was to meet back with him at that same spot some 30-45 minutes later. I could never quite make sense as to why he wanted me to come back and meet him as once he simply stated we were to meet up again he just dragged on to talking about something else. It appeared to me that he wanted me to come back and meet with him so he could tell me where he had pawned my camera.
Of course I openly agreed to meet him back there a short while later but, needless to say, I had no intention of going back there and having another one-on-one chat with a clearly unstable drug addict who had already threatened my life and taken my most prized possession. It didn’t make sense to me, and I still struggle with it thinking back now, the behavior of this individual. He could have easily pushed me up behind that building and said, “Give me your camera, your wallet, and your phone or I’ll shoot you.” I’d nervously hand the camera over and root my pockets for my wallet and my phone and hand them over. He’d slip off behind the building and leave me there with nothing left to steal and no way to call the police. But instead his gunshot threat was followed by a personal acknowledgment of his drug addiction and its existence as a sickness in his life. This, if anything, makes me question his addiction angle even though a lot about his demeanor told me that he was in fact addicted to “something”. But at the same time, drug addicts, especially ones ripping you off at gunpoint, seldom admit that they are an addict.
For some reason this guy had a sympathetic edge to him, which included the perception that he wanted to meet with me a short while later to let me know where my camera ended up. And even if that was the case, it would have been egregiously dangerous for me to return to that area. It was worth the risk of losing my camera forever to immediately flee that area once I had the opportunity. And finally, one of the last things that gave off an element of sympathy from this guy it what he did in regards to my cell phone. He made me pull my phone up and wanted me to take it apart so he could take the battery, obviously so I’d be unable to contact the police. But once I pulled the thin rubber protective piece that went around the phone it exposed that the phone was actually one complete piece and the only way to get to the battery was to break the phone open. So did this guy make me shatter my phone? Did he just take my phone and wander off with it and my camera? No…
This is where things got truly bizarre, the ending. Instead of snagging my phone he pulled a black glove out of his pocket and told me to put my phone in it. I had no clue what the hell he was trying to do but I was so shaken I didn’t care. I was purely in cooperative mode. He then told me to “put it in my drawers”, meaning my underpants. So I did. With a gloved phone teetering against my junk he finally asked for my money, but instead of just snagging my wallet he let me open my wallet and hand him what I grabbed (for all he knew I was hiding other money in there). A short comedic crack came when he saw the outline of a check in my wallet which was a check I had received from my bank the day before. They had apparently overcharged me for something and had sent me a check worth $9.45. When he saw the check the mugger, and I’m not making this up, said, “Is that a check? Man you gotta cash them things!” In any other situation I might have cracked up. Like with the phone, he never just snagged my wallet, but took the $12 that I had to hand over.
In that moment, with all he was able to get from me, he signaled for me to head back over by the school (as there was a high school about two blocks away). I obeyed, taking one last look at my camera as he stuffed it into my back and walked to circle around the backside of one of those buildings, before walking away. I stepped around the long abandoned building I had passed before, trying to keep the glove steady in my pants as I walked, as calmly as I could in the opposite direction from the mugger. My main focus above all else was getting away and making sure he wasn’t following me. Despite the shocking nature of a crime that I had never experienced before (including the threat of getting shot) I was able to gather my bearings rather quickly. I only wish I had been able to maintain my cool that well facing this guy one-on-one.
Needless to say, I contacted the Portland Police pretty much to just make a report and get it in the system. It was incredibly unlikely, even if an officer had pulled up right next to me by chance, that we would have caught up with this guy, wherever he was going. And when I called the police to report what had happened I was redirected to the non-emergency line to make my initial report. I then waited almost an hour for an officer to arrive, again, since I had been redirected to the non-emergency line. This made it even more unlikely that the guy would get captured. It’s like that scene in “The Big Lebowski” when the police find his car but his briefcase is gone. When I asks if the police have any leads on finding the guy that took it the officer on the scene laughs his ass off as little mugging/theft cases aren't anywhere near the top of the list in terms of focal cases being pursued by law enforcement. I wasn't expecting a miracle but when a seemingly courteous officer arrived to take down the report I thought this would at least be an amicable report.
However, the officer spent most of the time laughing and me and telling me how I had did everything wrong. Having been told my whole life that when someone tries to mug or rob you, just cooperate cause it’s not worth dying for, this officers’ retort to me was simply, “Why didn’t you just run?” This was his greatest issue. Apparently, in his eyes, this guy was no big deal and I should’ve kept my camera and taken off running cause he wasn't going to actually shoot me. It was practically insulting how little work this officer put into helping or having any concern for my situation. So of course he took my information for his report but reiterated to me that nothing was going to come of it cause this was just some homeless guy that ripped me off. It was astonishing how this officer seemed to know the guy that mugged me better than I did. He just knew everything about this guy, to which I figure: Hey, you know the guy so well, then go arrest him! (…sarcasm implied) It was really absurd how dismissive he was that he just presumed this was an off-the-wall homeless guy. Based on how this guy was dressed, if he was homeless, then he had just recently become homeless cause what he was wearing probably cost two to three times what I was wearing had cost. He had no battered appearance or dirty/stained look to his overall look, which would have absolutely been the case if he was just some homeless derelict.
But what lingered in my mind the most, and in the mind of everyone with whom I told of this experience was the fact that according to this officers direct advice, I should’ve just taken off running. Even if the guy didn't have a gun and, let’s say, a knife, he could’ve chased me and tried stabbing at me. And if he didn’t have a weapon at all he still could have tried to attack me with just his hands and feet. It was an absolutely dangerous situation wherein there was no certainly that taking off running would have carried me to safety. And the officers whole reasoning was, “This guy’s not going to shoot you because you were in public.” So, because people may have been around and could have seen us, this guy was not going to shoot me. It’s common sense, no one will shoot at or assault you if there’s witnesses around. And he was so cocky about that, trying to make me feel like a fool for thinking otherwise.
And then, interestingly enough, the following afternoon, a man attacked and knifed two men to death in front of a bunch of people along a Max train line. Surely no matter where you are reading this from you know of the story which I speak, the crazy guy who was harassing a couple Muslim women and when others came to their defense this guy wielded a knife at them and ended up killing two of them. This happened literally 32 hours after my ordeal where an officer told me to run cause “nobody assaults someone when there are witnesses around.” Absolutely unbelievable. Despite my frustration over the matter and my need to obtain a new camera and new lenses no matter the cost, I still feel I did what was right and those around me have reiterated that sentiment.
It’s now almost a week later that I sit writing this, still without a new camera but on the push to obtain one. I’ve established a Go Fund Me page to try and help raise funds to obtain this new camera (here’s the link to that page: https://www.gofundme.com/7r2rp-replacing-my-stolen-camera) as I am again in the middle of a very important film production that I need to continue work on not just for me but for everyone in Portland who wants this city to not just survive but to thrive. So it’s certainly been a hitch in my get along as I’m just a working still like most of you with rent, bills, food, etc. to pay for. I don't just have $1,500 laying about, I really wish I did. But above all else I’m just glad to be alive and kicking, and I believe that’s why I was able to remain so calm in the immediate aftermath of the mugging was knowing my existence, no matter my love of film, was lightyears more important than my film camera. But still, that camera was a part of me. I’ve shot some 15 films since the summer of 2012 with that camera including my first feature film this past year. I miss that camera like a family member if I am to be perfectly honest. Purchasing another one, which will granted be an identical camera right down to the flip out screen, will still just never quite be the same. But I have to push on, for the sake of my sanity and my love I have to keep moving forward and not get trapped in that one moment of shock-jarring fear.
So here’s to tomorrow… I wonder what that will have in store for me.
