NW Bureau chief Bill Yardley reports:

In the last year, the food safety division of the Oregon Agriculture Department has received more than 600 complaints about animals in food stores, and a disproportionate number of them have come from the Pearl District of Portland, an affluent, dog-passionate procession of newer condominiums and shiny retail shops at the edge of downtown.

There’s some nice little sicky lines aimed at the Pearl District, too. Spot the thinly veiled editorializing (hint— I’ve put it in bold):

The Pearl District is a recently erected confection in a city often regarded as ahead of the curve in so-called New Urbanist thinking. Streetcars whisper by. Yoga is popular in Tanner Springs Park, described by a sign at its entrance as “a habitat garden created on reclaimed industrial land.” Dogs are not allowed in that park, but some owners let them run free at a dog park nearby, where the area’s developer, Hoyt, provides bags for poop and empties the trash cans that fill up quickly.

Enjoy. I especially liked the line about not making a fuss until the dogs “poop in the aisle.”

Matt Davis was news editor of the Mercury from 2009 to May 2010.

13 replies on “NYT Gets Woofy On Pearl District Dogs”

  1. The NYT scooped you in your own backyard on the dog poop in the Safeway story. Hopefully you are professionally embarassed.

    Actually you should be professionally embarassed by the fact that you’re covering the New York Times covering a story about dog poop in the Safeway. (But you’re not, I know.)

  4. Shame there’s the Pearl–it would be better if our yuppies stuck to suburban sprawl like in most places in the U.S. Where do they get off thinking they can gentrify an area which previously had very little in the way of residence or viable business, and via brownfield redevelopment in a reasonably urban, dense, mixed-use fashion. What a horrible blight.

    Look, I dont’ shop at most places in the Pearl, and have little interest in the hoity-toity culture of the area–not my style. And I despise a lot of the new construction, aesthetically. But it is an urban area, and it makes sense that some a city’s wealth live and shop in an area in its city center. A city has to have some wealth, sorry to say–everybody can’t be struggling creative class and underemployed like us. Slagging the Pearl is just silly, when the centers of most American cities are derelict, completely abandoned after 5pm, etc.–the Pearl is far from perfect, but it beats emptiness and suburban sprawl and urban divestment. For largely new construction in the 2000s, Portland could have done a lot worse.

  11. The Pearl is empty, Ian. Empty of much in the way of character or soul. Anybody who’s been to the old Blue Gallery or Long Goodbye, or the old Wink’s Hardware for that matter, can tell you that.
    But you’re right about one thing; it seems inevitable that suburban wealth will buy up anything in this town that used to be accessible and interesting.

  12. @ atomic – I know, right? Things have changed in my Oregon. Growing up when we we ate tacos it was a damn good day, because it meant that the dog shit hadn’t piled up so high you couldn’t get to the El Paso seasoning. So don’t bitch to me about a few poodle poo splatters getting in the way of your fancy bunny shaped organic mac n’ cheese.

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