PDX Red House, NYC Restaurants...

... and how the Scorpions t-shirt I'm wearing might soon be yours

Greetings fellow travelers, from upstate New York, where last night I received a phone call during dinner. It was from a filmmaker I worked with in Portland last month, when I was covering what post-election drama the activists might engage in, and boy did they, smashing storefronts, screaming at cops, setting fire to flags, the usual. As I said at the time (and over and over and over), they’ve really got to learn some new tricks.

And they have, sort of, or more precisely, they’ve found a new source of fuel for their outrage, a little red house a half-mile from there I lived for 15 years, a house at the center of a controversy that involves race, gentrification, subprime mortgages, vehicular manslaughter, a “Moorish sovereign citizen movement”, an autonomous zone in which people are open-carrying semi-automatic weapons, and, per usual in Portland 2020, a populace divided about just what is going on and what to do about it.

To get back to the filmmaker, he had some tips for me, he said, from people who’d had dealings with the Kinneys, the family who owned the red house, and also, that he, the filmmaker, was moving out of Portland; he didn’t want to deal with how the city and its citizens were pushed and pulled every single fucking day by some latest issue that was or was not grounded in verifiable reality.

The day before, I’d had someone texting me photos of the so-called autonomous zone with the message, “Impressive show of support.”

There was the neighbor down the block from the red house who apparently dragged over some pallets with the ardent hope they’d be used to block off the police, who, also per usual, were the enemy. There was the self-described “peace officer” strapped with an AK-47 as he addressed the crowd, and there was the DA’s statement that said violence would lead to “aggressive prosecution,” which, based on messages I had with friends, no one believed.

I understood the frustrations, and while I was happy for people to give me their p.o.v.s, it seemed we were in the same estranged encampments we’d been in since May, from supposedly objective journalists calling the barricades “the best I’ve seen this year” to media provocateurs posting mugshots of all the people arrested and released. It felt like the same relatives having the same argument over and over and over again.

I doubted anyone, no matter how many facts they were presented with, was going to change their mind. Did the activists walk away when it was reported that the person who’d bought the Kinneys home would sell it back to them for what he paid? When the GoFundMe for the family had crested $300,000, more than enough to cover the cost? When it was discovered that, far from being homeless as reported, the family had another home nearby in which they were living? Nope. The Red House was the latest story for protestors to and ride they’ll ride it until the next one can be appropriately crafted so that fighting in the streets seems justified, seems necessary, fighting having become its own addiction and delight.

New York City restaurants are engaged in their own fight, to stay alive, after Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Friday all indoor dining will be shut again as of December 14. I am about this for Reason and won’t scoop myself, but to say, it’s heartbreaking seeing the edifices establishments have put up outside in hopes of luring customers and feeding them safely, but I don’t know…

Speaking of Reason and COVID-19, I had a piece up earlier this week, about a guy who had what he thought was a win-win idea: with gyms in constant threat of being closed, he’d rent out the Peloton in his apartment by the session. Clever, right? Yeah, nah…

Last, I will be doing another #AMA tonight (Sunday the 13th) at 8pm EST, over on Twitter (@nancyromm) via Periscope. I wonder what Nancy will be wearing, you say? Wonder no more! This badass shirt, which I will give (or another 1991 band shirt) to one of the lovely people who sign up tonight (or tomorrow!) to this Substack, nancyrommelmann.substack.com/subscribe. Girl’s gotta eat!