WHAT HAPPENS when you spend months asking 43 downtown markets to pretty-please stop selling malt liquor and paint-thinner wines—and only nine actually say they want in?
The answer, says Commissioner Amanda Fritz, is this: You make everyone do it anyway.
“Some felt it worked out well,” she said. “But it works better if everyone is on board.”
Under a new plan, the Portland Office of Neighborhood Involvement would lump Old Town, downtown, and Goose Hollow into a state-controlled “alcohol impact area.” There are two goals: To choke off the chief supply of hooch for “street drinkers,” and to help Portland’s sidewalks look more like the rosy pictures painted in the New York Times.
In the affected neighborhoods, merchants couldn’t sell malted beverages with more than 5.75 percent alcohol or wines containing more than 14 percent. Microbrewers would be spared, and so would the two state-run stores that sell the hard stuff.
And when you’re saying goodbye to 24- and 40-ounce containers, blow those tallboys a kiss, too. Sales of 16-ounce beer cans, alone or in six-packs, would also be forbidden.
Fritz’s plan replaces a voluntary effort called Vibrant PDX. It has support from, among others, the Portland Police Bureau, a few merchants, and the folks who run the Julia West House, a place where homeless Portlanders can take refuge.
The hoped-for booze-free zone, they note, is one percent of Portland’s area, but accounts for nearly 60 percent of public intoxication calls. They point to similar zones in Washington state and salivate over the results: fewer piss puddles, fewer panhandlers, and fewer sirens whizzing past.
But critics are ripping the plan as unfair and ineffective at best, and outright discriminatory at worst.
“This is basically punishing poor people,” said Israel Bayer, director of Street Roots, noting cuts in government cash for addiction recovery programs. “I don’t think it gets to the root cause of anything, any time you target the user instead of the actual realities on the street.”
Political insiders also invoke Portland’s dalliance with drug- and prostitution-free zones, efforts rejected in recent years amid privacy and racial-profiling concerns.
So what would a better ban look like? Ask industry lobbyists, and they might suggest something voluntary. They also might favor a ban on specific brands of problem products—instead of merely restricting alcohol percentages and giving small brewers a loophole subject to legal challenges.
Many critics say any ban should be citywide. Otherwise, anyone absolutely thirsty for, say, Steel Reserve could just hop on the MAX to buy some. And come right back. And still offend tourists on Burnside.
This time, even some of the shopkeepers behind the voluntary ban are grousing. Under Vibrant PDX, for example, 16-ounce beer cans were okay to sell. They keep registers ringing, making up more than 30 percent of all sales in the area.
“You’re just penalizing innocent store owners,” said Paula Byun, who spoke for her parents on Thursday at a public meeting where businesses could ask to be excluded from the ban. Her parents own McCormick Pier Grocery, inside a condo development on Naito Parkway. “That’s what our neighbors buy, our residents buy.”
The city this week is expected to say which businesses will be excluded. Theresa Marchetti, Portland’s liquor license expert, hinted her office would take a dim view of laments over lost sales. In Washington, as well as at problem businesses here slapped with similar restrictions, businesses welcomed the quiet and saw sales of other products increase.
If the council accepts the plan next month, it heads to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. There, commissioners would spend months making tweaks in concert with lobbyists, cops, bureaucrats, and neighbors before issuing a final decision.
Fritz acknowledged Monday that some provisions, like the ban on 16-ounce cans, may yet be changed. She also said she’d explore other measures, including expanding the zone, if a ban merely pushes the problem elsewhere.
But she dismissed complaints of discrimination, saying that unlike the drug and prostitution zones, no people would be banned—only liquor sales. She also trumpeted ongoing treatment-based efforts to combat public intoxication, noting that it’s “not one or the other.”
“These are all matters we’re considering,” she stressed. “It’s not a done deal.”
Fuck you Amanda Fritz! You can dismiss complaints of discrimination, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t true. THis is just another way to push people with alcoholism, drug addiction, mental heaslth problems, and homelessness out of sight. What kind of solution is moving the problem to another area? What kind of solution is making a downtown debauch something only the wealthy can afford? What kind of solution is telling the poor and disenfrachised, “We don’t care enough about you as fellow humans, we just want you to take yourself and your problems somewhere else.”
Shame on you for being so shortsighted and vile.
Word, snickerdoodle. The system is fucked up somewhere else. Treating symptoms is not an effective solution.
I say this policy is ridiculous until TriMet runs buses more often than every half-hour.
You can keep the Malt Liquor and fortified wine… but keep your grubby bitch ass hands off my tall boys Amanda.
This only makes sense when coupled with increased outreach from mental health professionals towards chronic street drunks. Otherwise it’s just pushing the problem around to different areas.
I think this is a good article. I feel more informed on the subject.
Although re-reading it, for an article that’s almost entirely “he-said/she-said” where are the street drinkers themselves in this article? Everyone talking what “they” are going to do–couldn’t Denis gone out and asked one? That’s something wrong with our system too, instant stir fry and snickerdoodle; participating in the Mercury’s online debate without questioning it perpetuates it. How can you help people if you accept them as voiceless others?
I am sure that banning this will get rid of alcohol abuse, just like banning drugs has led to a drug free portland and blah blah blah. Oh and Amanda, anyone who teams up with the OLCC is someone I am not going to vote for in the future.
And with excellent timing, the UK Independent proves that Amanda Fritz is a communist:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fo…
where is legislation banning bad marg’s made with too much corn syrup, ordering a mojito at a crouded bar, or some of those over the top martini names? that is what downtown needs!
This so-called ban on high-content malt drinks will prove to be an utter failure, i GARANTEE YOU THAT! Remember afew years ago when the Portland Business Alliance pressured local stores into locking up cans of spray paint? Have you noticed any LESS graffiti? More, perhaps? That’s what i thought. If i were a homeless person who mostly resided dt & such an absurd “malt ban” had gone into affect, i would simply hop the MAX [which is free, hint hint] to the nearest corner store in SE /NE (the one on NE Killingsworth & Albina might be a good choice), buy my cheap booze there, take in back to dt, & get smashed out of my mind as a form of civil disobedience! Amanda Fritz is such a reactionary digbat – what on Earth makes her think that banning malt booze in dt would lead to less public drunkenness? Addicts have proven, if nothing else, just how resourceful & determined they are. And addicts are very skilled at getting around stupid-ass poorly thought-out ordinances that attempt to get in b/t them & their addictions. If said ordinances aren’t proven un-constitutional before-hand.
But this isn’t just about so-called street-drinking or the homeless. It’s also about the many folks who live in apts in dt that this would affect. Think about this: you stay in dt. As part of living dt, you already have to pay higher prices for (among everything else) your STEEL RESERVES, FOURS, SPARKS, & MIKES HARD`ER LEMONADES. Part of the price of living dt, right? You walk to the near-by store, get what you want, & take it the fuck home. You drink it AT HOME and don’t bother anyone, awesome. All of a sudden, the city wants to ban YOUR FAVORITE AFFORDABLE drinks from being sold in dt, making your ass have to bike across the bridge or take a MAX waaay into SE or where ever, just so you can get what you want. And what good will this do, seriously? The drunks you see dt already… they will all still be there! Ban or no ban.
And should there ever be a city-wide ban, drunks will simply go to Gresham where there’s plenty of dirt-cheap high-content booze & buy it there! Good luck trying to make the world a better place…
Oh come ON. I work downtown and this article makes me reeeally happy.
Most of these “street drinkers” downtown are kids who want to travel in packs and live without rules because they didn’t want to follow their parents rules and stay in school. I’ve seen this everyday for years.
It’s obnoxious to not be able to walk from work to the local deli four blocks away and be stopped by 5 different drunken asshole for change so they can get more drunk. If these people want to live this way, nobody is going to stop them, they will get help if they want it, and they don’t want it. So yes, please, let them live like rats elsewhere.
I was homeless when I moved here, and I didn’t beg for money I found ways to make money and get help and stay physically presentable to society. If I can do this within a year, many people have NO EXCUSE.
If getting drunk on the street didn’t exist, Old Town would disappear like vapor. Street drinking is the only thing substantiating that place. I mean, as far as I can see, this is the expressed purpose of the neighborhood. Why else would there be a taco truck nearby?
In all honesty though, people are crying out that such a ban needs to be coupled with increased addiction treatment programs. Listen, neither the ban nor the programs are going to make visible reductions in the number of street bums you see. Fellas gonna drink! You simply can’t stop that. What you see is the result of a much larger social and economic system, not the result of what beverages are being sold.
Plus you can get drunk on the regular beer, too. I swear I did it once.
There’s always going to be someone homeless, there’s always going to be someone getting arrested for being too f**cked up.
I dislike the proposal since it’s a waste of time.
I dislike even more people like snickerdoodle whose heart bleeds so profously for the homeless peoples drinking problem. I’m not advocating a modest proposal here, I’m just saying if this law did pass, which I’m not advocating either, oh god forbid homeless people have to spend more on hooch. Oh it’s so wrong.
We should give them discounts on piercings and horn rimmed glasses as well, then they’d fit in on Burnside that much better. Homeless or hipster, now that’s a fun game!
You are so cynical and world wise, idc. Its astounding how you draw from your massive breadth of experience and sum up the debate and issue at hand with “god forbid homeless people have to spend more on hooch”. Are you retarded? In the same conversation? Did you get lost when you left your mom’s basement to grab some gogurts out of the freezer?
You, my sheltered friend, are a waste of time.
My point is that people who are poor and who drink malt liquor deserve respect and representation as much as people who walk down the sidewalk and ignore said people. They are fucking people, not problems.
FREEEEEEEEEEEEEDOM !!!!!!! No excuses.Wait til they ban all liquor……..oh they tried that.
What the fuck? I live at McCormick Pier and my boyfriend and I grab six packs of tall boys all the time…this makes me mad!
I saw two homeless people smoking crack in the glass elevators at the foot bridge over Union Station the other day…I’d say that’s more of a problem than the few empties or piles of puke I find around.
This is another example of government over-reach. I went to the Safeway in the Pearl and asked the attendant in the wine section about this and he said that nearly all of the wines in the store would be subject to the ban since wine is over 14%. Are they saying that homeless and chronic alcoholics are going to spend twenty dollars on a bottle of wine. Also, boxed wines are included in this ban which really ridiculous. I like to have a box of cheap wine in my fridge for when the spirit moves me. Why should I cross the river to buy it. I am not homeless, pay taxes, and do not hang out on the streets. I live downtown. You don’t have to be poor or homeless to live downtown. There are many of us who work and live normal lives. Stop punishing us because you can’t solve the initial problem.
All this will do is push the drunk homeless to the East Side where I live. Great, thanks alot. Part o fthe reason I would never4 live downtown is all the fucking bums. Now if they can’t drink downtown where do you think they’ll end up? Fucking spanging outside MY corner store. Great. Stoked.
This is just asking for beer baron tactics. I’ll just buy this stuff across town and bring it downtown for sale so that those that are pissed off about this can get what they want. Why would anyone think this is going to stop street drinking, or halt any other drinking activity. This entire idea is stupid, flat out.
If you start doing city wide bans, you are asking for leanings of prohibition, or at least the beginning of that sentiment being allowed. This is a major problem to start walking with, because people who aren’t willing to figure out an answer to the mental health, and street population under reasonable terms, start taking to task those that have no business suffering with it. Me and you. Stop this madness now, especially forcing businesses to derail making money. Downtown is already having trouble trying to keep businesses. Another piece of proof we are not a business friendly city.
Great, the Plaid Pantry across the Burnside bridge will become the hippest club in town.
I work downtown. The best part of the day is buying tallboys after work. Fuck this.
Dear Ms Fritz
A ban merely pushes the problem elsewhere, lets make it for all of the city ? This way your discrimination will be for all of the city. But you need to add Pine Sol to the list. In South East Portland this has been a issue. Sad but true.
First they came for the Four Loco. And I did not speak up because I was not a bro.
Snickernoodle roodle de poodle.Your soooooooooooooo full of yourself.People with problems ARE problems.Duh !!!!! We just dont need anymore stinking laws telling us who can drink and what they can drink while out in the freeeeeee world.Fuck I’m for cheap brew.Idiots buying bar priced booze?Kind of like the saying “Cocaine is Dogs way of saying you earned too much”.I’m going to play with my toys now.And maybe have a gogurt.And maybe chase it with a Four dollar tapster……..for uh hipster points.Oh and get a peircing cause thats in style like a tackle box on your face.Fuck the glasses….they just make people look like nazi torture pervs.Afterwards……piss on a tree!Dog does.