Established in 1970
www.portlandobserver.com
Volume XXXX, Number 5
Wednesday • February 3, 2010
m er
‘City of Roses’
Committed to Cultural .Diversity
Last
Thursday
Clamp
Down
Curbs on rowdy
revelry pondered
by J ake
T homas
T he P ortland O bserver
When the nights are warm and the sun
lingers late into the evening the crowds come
to the Alberta Arts District on the last Thurs­
day o f the month.
Artists lug wooden crates brimming with
their work to sell. Musicians set up on street
comers, Alberta becomes quickly packed
with people.
Last Thursday, an arts celebration that
has been occurring in a gentrifying part of
town for roughly 13 years, has embodied the
spontaneity and innovation o f a city that
sees hordes o f young creative types flock to
it every year.
But City Hall seems poised to impose more
structure on the freeform event that has
drawn the ire o f residents who've had to
endure the noise and congestion from the
T
D
.
.
photo by J ake
T homas /T he P ortland O bserver
me Portland band “All the Apparatus, ” comprised o f musicians who m ost recently lived in Hawaii, plays to the crowd on the
sidewalk o f Northeast Alberta Street during last week's Last Thursday celebration.
crowds, as well as the remnants o f the night’s
revelry in their yards
The monthly event, as its name implies,
has been the polar opposite, in substance
and style, o f First Thursday, a night when the
upscale galleries downtown and in the Pearl
District open up their doors.
Last Thursday- which is part street fair,
part carnival, and part art walk- has uncertain
origins in a part o f town that was once a hub
o f gang violence, but also an incubator for a
robust art scene due to its cheap rents.
Donna Gaurdino, the owner o f Gaurdino
Gallery on Alberta, said that the event began
as an attempt to get Portlanders to take a
second glance at the area.
continued
on page IS
Precinct Loss Still Hurts
The loss o f a police
precinct in north
Portland is still a
cause o f concern for
local residents. The
former precinct
building at the foot of
the St. Johns Bridge
draws a look from
AlexSandra, a neigh­
borhood activist and
business owner.
PHOTO by
M ark W ashington /
T he P ortland
O bserver
Police bureau cuts
may come next
by J ake
T homas
T he P ortland O bserver
Just a half year after the city merged the
North Portland Police Precinct with the North­
east Precinct for cost saving purposes, resi­
dents are still uneasy with the change and
feel that their community is less secure.
Last week, residents gathered at the Life
Fellowship Church on North Lombard Street
at a meeting organized by the Public Safety
Action Committee, to express their concerns
to the city’s top public safety brass includ­
ing Police Chief Rosie Sizer, Police Commis­
sioner Dan Saltzman, Multnomah County
District Attorney Mike Shrunk, and North
Portland Police Commander Jim Ferraris.
As the crowd trickled in, an overhead
projector displayed a quote from Sir Robert
Peel, the founder o f the London Metropoli­
tan Police Force, which read, “The police are
the public, and the public are the police.”
Chris Duffy, the chair o f the Arbor Lodge
Neighborhood, moderated the event taking
questions from the audience.
“We want to be a solution to the problems
we are facing,” she said, before turning the
microphone over to Sizer.
Sizer described the process leading up to
the precinct closure as a “painful conversa­
tion,” but hoped that the audience would
keep in mind that there had been positive
advancements in public safety.
continued
on page 20