Secret Photographs
One of the most miserable winters I ever spent was in Portland, OR. Now, a lot of people like this city, but I had a terrible time there and every aspect of the place began pissing me off. For instance, I would become completely incensed that the the bus system, which I thought sucked, had animals and stuff designating the different lines rather than colors, letters, or numbers. I found it humiliating.
“How do I get to the movie theatre?”
“Oh, take the bear bus to the rain bus. They catch the salmon bus crosstown. Don’t take the trout bus, that’ll let you off near Eugene.”
“How do I tell the salmon bus from the trout bus?”
“Just look at the dorsal fins, stupid.”
You see what I’m saying. Anyway, I spent a lot of time working on my thesis, drinking, and wishing I was somewhere else.
I lived in South East Portland, and one day I decided to go see this movie at a movie theatre (the Baghdad? I forget.) which also served beer. The movies were generally terrible, but what the fuck. Anyway, I got there and realized I only had money for one or the other, so I decided to get a beer in the adjoining bar and stare out the window and feel sorry for myself. I was low on cash at the time, and going out, even if for only one beer, was a pretty big deal, even if I was using the time to catch up on my self pity.
So, there was a big plateglass window that stretched the length of the building and faced the street, and a counter was set alongside it. It was the same set up that Starbucks utilizes, really. I was sitting at a stool, sipping my Mickey’s Irish Cream Ale, and watching the people go by. Then, all of a sudden, a car pulls over and a guy starts taking photographs.
He was parked across teh street, so it was impossible to tell who he was taking photos of, although it could have been anyone in the bar. I no one seemed to notice what was going on except me.
“Hey, check it out.” I said to a guy sitting two stools down, but he ignored me. The photographer stopped taking pictures and sped away.
I’ve wondered for a long time what this was all about. I’m assuming that the photographer was a private detective. If so, who was he photographing? There were probably a dozen people in the bar, so I suppose it could have been any of them. It’s strange that he would know exactly what bar his subject could be found at. I also assume that it was important that the subject didn’t know he was under surveillance. Was it a divorce case? A kidnapping? Maybe the photographer wasn’t a detective, but actually a blackmailer, or something even more sordid.
I guess that was probably the most exciting thing that happened to me in Portland.
September 19th, 2005 at 7:52 pm
Sorry to hear you hated Portland, but, you know, the bus lines had NUMBERS too, just like anywhere else. The real Portland folk just ignore that animal shit unless they’re talking to little children. Or tourists. Ha ha! Just kidding.
September 20th, 2005 at 3:21 pm
Numbers? Really? I was clearly too drunk to understand this.
Don’t be sorry. I didn’t like anything that winter.
September 21st, 2005 at 11:21 am
Portland had buses? Clearly I was even more drunk.
But I did witness an unfortunate scene in Portland at a park where some dumb thuggish kid was throwing gravel to the ducks as if it were food. I think the ducks were just humoring him though, because they milled around his fraudulent crumbs but didn’t bite.
September 26th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
One time my friend hocked a big loogie at a duck and the duck totally caught it in its mouth and ate it, then made a peevish face like it knew it had just been tricked. Then a park service officer who had seen the whole thing yelled at us, and we ran away like scared rabbits. The moral of the story is, Oregonians like to harass ducks.