Toilet on Asylum Avenue

Where: Fred Myers 3805 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Highlights: Eco Friendly, Posh for a grocery store

Where: Powell's Books & Fresh Pot
Highlights: Literary Enlightenment

Though surely none of my readers will believe the tale I must now relate to excuse my several weeks absents, I feel compelled to live up to my humble pledge to tell nothing but the absolute truth- in particular regarding Portland facilities.

My story begins two weeks ago as I set out to review a part of Portland known as the "hipster" street, frequented by young men and women with tasseled manes, tight pants, cigarette induced glares, and the lost look of the temporarily insane. The man in front of me spoke on the phone in Russian baby talk then spit, narrowly missing me. A pirate statue with a feather boa around it's neck smiled at us from someones front porch.

Suddenly, an animal which looked like a cross between a duck and a beaver wearing a patch over one eye ran across my path, looking repeatedly over his shoulder. "Oh dear, oh dear," the thing exclaimed, "I am so very late!" I followed the thing, because- well- who wouldn't be curious- as it rushed past deliberately obtuse pedestrians into Powell's, through the bathroom door, and disappeared down the toilet. "I do declare," I said aloud, peering down in perplexity, "This day keeps getting curiouser." As I stared into that plumbic abyss, a strong pull arose from within it's darkness drawing me into the depths beneath.

The next thing I knew I was falling past a series of objects suspended in space, flashing like memories past my vision. Ahead of me, maintaining a consistent distance so as to seem immobile, was the thing, muttering under it's breath I suppose, "so very very late." My dear readers, remembering similar journeys taken by girls, will be relieved to hear that I ate nothing on my journey and kept my mouth fixedly closed the entire fall.

Eventually, as all falling objects supposedly do, I hit the bottom only to find myself outside a large and imposing property. The original Oregon Hospital for the Insane took up the enormous square space between 9th and 12th, Hawthorne (at that time Asylum Avenue) and Taylor. This asylum later relocated in Salem, gaining notoriety for it's gruesome abuses of inmates.

I followed the thing into a pleasant building and spent the next few weeks meeting people suffering from all range of infirmities. I met those who had engaged in indecent behavior, those who liked to listen to the mingling of strange harmonies, people pretending to be pirates and people pretending to be artists, dreamers and inventors and mathematicians. I felt the strong sense of deja vu as I recognized these ghosts who had haunted me on Portland's modern streets. "Keep Portland Weird" could just have easily applied to 150 years ago as to the present.

I will not relate my travels through the streets of 19th century SE and my return to the present so much as to say that I made it safely back to the present day streets to complete my review of the toilets. The sad hauntings of the insane and the feeling of loneliness which shadows anyone who thinks differently from others affects Portland pedestrians like France's mistral wind. Photographs of the bathroom at The Fresh Pot- a coffee shop connected to Powell's- revealed a population weighed down by an oppressive society, crying for a way to escape.


One person quoted Wilde:

It is only what is good in man
that wastes and withers there
pale anguish keeps the heavy gate
and the warder is despair

(from The Ballad of Reading Gaol)

The poem refers to a prison and I remember the faces of the inmates of that asylum so many years ago. I realize that smell which has permeated so many of these trendy places in Portland, the claustrophobic smell, is the smell of imprisonment. All these settlers who have since Portland's insurrection escaped the sadness of their past have found, like many of Wilde's characters, that this imprisonment lies in their hearts not in their surroundings.

And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.

Review
Hawthorne has always been a strange dichotomy between counter culture riffraff and the wealthiest members of Portland. The two main public bathrooms within a block of each other represent perfectly this juxtaposition. The Fred Myers bathroom boasts a new environmentally advanced plumbing system, in line with the Portland airport, so customers stuffing themselves on sushi at the grocery sushi bar can relax in the knowledge that they've consumed a minimum amount of water in disposing of their organic waste. They rebuilt the store as part of an initiative to earn the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certificate which should encourage the Whole Foods market.

Because Fred Myer bathrooms are conveniently located and accessible without making a purchase, they get more traffic than other smaller facilities. Compared to both the Powell's and the Fresh Pot bathrooms, however, they are kept tolerably clean and the multiple stalls give the consumer options. Out of the Powell's and Fresh Pot bathrooms, Fresh Pot is the most reliable though currently filled with quotations urging you to kill yourself or rage against society like"so empty inside? Kill your TV!" and "The cat will nap when he is ready to face his dreams." They recently painted the Powell's bathroom an edgy green, probably a semi regular occurrence as many bathroom goers use the walls as a canvas for their angst. Also- one can browse the zines and foreign language section while waiting for the Powell's bathroom, discovering "delightful" digests from local writers.

Otherwise the bathrooms are pretty standard unisex single bathrooms vs. sterile multi stall megaplex. It would be an interesting sociological study to draw up a demographic for each of these three bathrooms though dwelling too much on the flocks of bathroom growers might get a little distasteful.

Grade:
Powell's C
Fresh Pot C-
Fred Myers B