Portland’s ‘open-air asylum experiment’ is largely over, making the city – with its fantastic food scene – an appealing holiday option again
I get off the bus at SW 6th Avenue, a handsome tree-lined street at the heart of downtown Portland. The site of the notorious former open-air fentanyl market outside an abandoned shopping mall, where until last year the strong and very cheap synthetic opioid was being freely traded, is now boarded up. The streets are quiet. On the next block I admire the handsome, historic facades of the US National Bank and Wells Fargo buildings and the securely-fenced new Midtown Beer Garden throngs with smart professionals seeking lunch from a score of food carts.
I find her enthusiasm premature.
