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Really wondering about this. The first time I saw the city was in the 1990s, and from what little I remember of the common fashions and local visual culture, a lot of it seemed like a holdover from what we stereotypically associate with "the 80s".
I've read a few blogs about and heard about shows people went to "back in the day" in the city, but am really curious what the energy was like in the city. For one thing, the electoral map of Multnomah County in the 1980 and 1984 elections hints that the city and surrounding area were very different politically. I've also heard there was a lot more crime in the city at the time, and it didn't quite have the reputation for arts and activism that it later gained.
Portland was a lot more blue collar and gritty in the 80s. Unlike many places in the US, Oregon didn't do well economically in the 80's as it struggled to transition away from a timber based economy as that industry relocated to lower cost areas with less environmental legislation and what remained automated to a much larger degree.
Electoral maps don't mean much over time. Both political parties have changed massively. Oregonians used to vote split tickets. I know my family voted for Les Aucoin (D) for congress, Atiyeh(R) or Goldsmidt(D) for Governor and Hatfield and Packwood both (R) for the Senate
Portland was awesome in the 80's. The music was great, cost of living was low, you could buy a great house for $65k, people were live and let live, the radical left wasn't there yet except for a fringe of eco terrorists. Portland's heyday. Sad to see what's happened since. Completely ruined.
I was in college in Portland in the 1980s. It was very cheap. Easy to find a room for about $200 or a studio apartment in the $500 range. Very little gentrification at all on the east side. All the trendy neighborhoods of today were pretty run down blue collar neighborhoods with lots of working class bars, porno shops, and crappy mini-marts. Hawthorne was probably the first street on the east side to actually start getting gentrified. There were still affluent pockets like Eastmoreland and Laurelhurst that essentially looked exactly like they do today. On the other hand, jobs were hard to find. Many of my fellow students left town after graduation to find professional work (mostly to CA or NY) or they wound up working in coffee shops or at Powell's just to stick around Portland.
Downtown was sort of meh. There were a lot of old theaters still showing movies along Broadway and the central business district was mostly just banks and other offices that weren't that interesting. Downtown had a few old classic restaurants like Hubers and Louis' Oyster Bar and there were various white table cloth sorts of places scattered about and some good Jazz clubs. My favorite place was called the Brasserie Montmartre which was on the Park Blocks. Definitely not nearly as much ethnic food as today. Ethnic restaurants were mostly traditional Chinese and then things like Greek or Italian.
The Pearl District did not exist. There was only Powell's and the old Weinhard Brewery down there and the beginnings of a couple of the first microbreweries scattered about the warehouses. McMenamin's was just getting started. I think they only had the Barley Mill on Hawthorne and the Blue Moon on 23rd to start, then they started buying old theaters to remodel and started growing like gangbusters by the 1990s. Old Town/China Town hasn't changed much except there used to be more old-school Chinese restaurants there. NW Portland was starting to gentrify and had some good restaurants and record stores. The West Hills mostly looked just like today...the same upscale houses tucked into leafy streets.
There were a LOT Of rock clubs scattered about along Burnside on the west side and here and there in inner-SE. So live music was super easy to find and there were a lot of good Portland bands, as well as all the other bands from Seattle and up and down the west coast that would pass through.
Overall, crime was definitely higher. You didn't park your car anywhere without putting a club on your steering wheel and pulling the stereo out. Or you were going to get your window broken or car stolen. The modern keyless computerized ignitions has really stopped car theft compared to those days.
As for arts and political activism? Definitely not so much. Portland really isn't much of a college town so didn't get the big protests that you might see in places like Berkeley or Eugene or even Seattle. Maybe it did in the 60s, I wasn't around then. Yes, there is Portland State, but it's mostly a sleepy commuter school and was even more so back then. And the other Portland-area schools are all tiny. There was some public art and such but it wasn't really thought of as an artsy destination. It was really more of a cultural backwater compared to places like NYC or SF or LA. All of this ANTIFA business and more recent protests are definitely a 21st Century thing. I don't really remember any sort of city-wide protests at all the whole time I was in college. Just local college stuff about topics like divestment from South Africa. I do think the environmental movement was starting to gear up around logging about that time. So you had some of that sort of eco-terrorism. But that was a tiny fringe.
Last edited by texasdiver; 03-01-2021 at 04:54 PM..
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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I arrived PDX in the late 70s, displaced from colorado. Found Portland quite passive with plenty of Rajneeshees enjoying their 10+ yr stay.
No crime issues and Laurelhurst was a walkable park and neighborhood as were most. No catalytic converters to steal, and hookers are not much into robbing young families. It's not the attention they desire, and more trouble than profit. Spaghetti Factory was just getting rolling strong and starting on their headquarters.
A different time, but severe housing and employment downturn due to spotted owl. One home we bought in 1984 had been on the market for 7 yrs. It was our best, and favorite. (And well under $100k for 10acres in town. A u-pick farm had been operating jsince 1921.).
I arrived PDX in the late 70s, displaced from colorado. Found Portland quite passive with plenty of Rajneeshees enjoying their 10+ yr stay.
No crime issues and Laurelhurst was a walkable park and neighborhood as were most. No catalytic converters to steal, and hookers are not much into robbing young families. It's not the attention they desire, and more trouble than profit. Spaghetti Factory was just getting rolling strong and starting on their headquarters.
A different time, but severe housing and employment downturn due to spotted owl. One home we bought in 1984 had been on the market for 7 yrs. It was our best, and favorite. (And well under $100k for 10acres in town. A u-pick farm had been operating jsince 1921.).
Very different and difficult times.
Oh yes, the Rajneeshees. They had a hotel down near PSU if I remember. You'd see them frolicking all over town. Hard to miss.
I was mugged riding home from work on my bike and my car was broken into multiple times when parked on the street in SE Portland. Bike theft was probably just as rampant as it is today. If you look at the actual violent and property crime statistics, crime peaked around 1995 in Portland but was still somewhat higher in the 1980s than today. It was not a crime-free time. Rates of both violent crime and property crime (per 100,000 population) were about double during the decade of the 1980s as they were during the decade of the 2010s. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/orcrime.htm
Main difference from today was that probably 95% of the city was ungentrified. Doesn't mean it was all bad or run down. Just old-school ordinary neighborhoods. You didn't have espresso shops, brew pubs, and upscale ethnic restaurants on every corner across the city. Those things existed, but only in select places like NW Portland and maybe Hawthorne and a few other pockets of inner SE.
The 1980s were pre-DVD and mostly pre-VCR so there were a lot of great movie theaters all over town. We used to go to the Roseway Theater on Sandy that would show vintage 1930s to 1950s movies every week. The owner would come out before each show and introduce the movie. I kind of remember there being an organ there too, but maybe that's my imagination. There were also cool old theaters downtown. My favorite was the Guild Theater next to the downtown library, which had a ceiling that was hundreds of lit stars. I went their years later and the stars were gone so I don't know what happened. Maybe some corporation bought it out and painted over them.
I did run across this old Oregonian article about all the old theaters in Portland. Most of these were still around and showing movies in the early 1980s but many were gone (especially the downtown ones) by the 1990s: https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2...olden_age.html
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Big difference in crime today... Is that much goes unreported, at the request of police.
+ Per capita is now very dilluted with huge population increases in metro region.
Of course it always depends where you are and what personal precautions you adhere to.
There were a few areas and blocks I avoided walking at night in the 1980s.
Today there are few blocks or areas I would choose to walk at night.
Ymmv.
We still are in Portland every Thursday night and many sat. and Sunday nights, diligent but not threatened. Haven't been accosted on mid-day midweek walks on Willamette, but news often reports those who are threatened, robbed, chased...and there are many tent cities today, that were not there in the 80's, but not as many trails / access points in 80's either. You could peacefully and silently live under a bridge then. Now there might be a bike trail under your bridge.
Overall, crime was definitely higher. You didn't park your car anywhere without putting a club on your steering wheel and pulling the stereo out. Or you were going to get your window broken or car stolen.
How true. I moved to NW Portland in ‘’87. My car was broken into twice the first week. Talked with my apartment manager about it. He kind of laughed and said he always just left his car unlocked, with a note left saying as much so that thieves wouldn’t break the windows.
It was a bit a shell shock experience for me, coming from some pretty sleepy Midwest roots. The manager was a nice enough guy and let me break my lease. Moved to Beaverton and had no issues there.
I grew up in West Linn back in the day when it was mostly just a mill town. I worked for a tow truck company in ~81 in downtown Portland. We worked out of a garage off Burnside near the old Blitz-Weinhart brewery. Portland had a real scam going back then. If you didn't pay your parking and put the ticket in your window your vehicle could be towed to one of the garages in the area. Then you'd have to pay about $50 to get your car back... usually at about 2-3 AM when you came out of whatever bar and found your car gone. It was pretty fun work, with about 4 other tow truck companies searching out cars to tow, so it was kind of a friendly rivalry. Downtown was kind of fun then. I worked from 7PM - 3AM, so I saw everything going on. The garage was in the gay district of the time, with several bath houses and gay clubs just as AIDS was being recognized, but not visibly impacting that community yet. Lots of ladies walking the streets or holding down a corner. People coming and going from the bars and clubs, or concerts at the Starlite Ballroom or Paramount Theater. I was threatened a couple times, but never attacked by anyone (mad/drunk car owners). Then the law changed and we couldn't tow anymore, so I was out of work and out of downtown at night...except for my own fun. It was a good time to be in my early 20s in the Portland area.
Completing I-205 in ~83 also changed a lot of the living/business dynamics too. People moved out along the freeway. Before 205 was finished West Linn, Wilsonville, Gladstone, Oregon City, etc. were all pretty undeveloped towns, with their own local businesses, shopping and entertainment areas. Traffic was easy on 205 back then, when it only went through to Foster Ave and then later Powell Blvd. Then you had to get back on surface streets like 82nd Ave. to get to the airport or McLaughlin to the Memorial Coliseum area. I'd guess Clackamas Town Center, and the area around it, were developed because of I-205.
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