all images copyright Richard Schemmerer
Assessing Alberta Street
Is it controversial to live out ones freedom and use public space for public display of this very freedom?
I guess it is because nobody really lives in a true Democracy.
Alberta Street once was a slum, a ghetto; an abandoned neighborhood left to thugs, dealers, prostitution and murderers who kept the people who lived their hostage with the threat of violence.
Crazy gays, free thinkers and artists moved in to take the neighborhood back. Nobody from the other side of the river cared; nobody came and helped for a long time. A view inspired business oriented individuals opened up galleries and café’ s anyway and believe it or not as soon as the hype started and the news got out that this infiltration of hope has begun to slowly change the hood to a community the gentrification advocates moved in.
Properties where gobbled up like cheap muffins in the bin from the day before. The word went out that this was an artist pallozza and hordes of visionaries started invading Portland to set up there alternative households. The Cultural Creative’s followed in their cum trail like the good copy cats they are.
The Burners came to the monthly art events added some spectacle and the art got better and the low end collectors flocked to this art enclave in the hope to catch a rising star on the cheap bent of the price curve.
The bordered up buildings came back to live as installation spaces. Artists where used to advertise real estate held onto by black and white and Latinos alike in the hope for quick profit during the speculation boom.
It worked for everyone but the low cost housing people and the artist coops that started to get priced out of the former ghetto. It’s an old story that repeated itself throughout the adjacent fringe areas like Mississippi Street but unlike Alberta on Mississippi the big developers mobbed right in.
There was no resistance against gentrification but on Alberta it was not that easy. Protest tags stated to pop up against any attempts to Star Buck’s like stores to come in instead the independent fashion designers wanted a piece of the art pie and opened up poppy stores with hand made goods.
The shootings stopped moved to other dark corners and commerce exploded, bloomed in wild ways unregulated free of hurdles child like in innocence almost like back to the times of barter and trade.
Like so many times a bad thing turns good turns to big for its own good and everyone becomes greedy and unhappiness settles back in as if this was the normal stage of humanness.
Control becomes a dividing issue and late comers to the table claim their stake and take away the origins not knowing the history of the place. Organizations are formed to milk for the highest benefit and unrest becomes the stable ground for an uncertain future.
The City shows off its police force and a standoff becomes unavoidable and nothing can be reversed to the same innocence because it has been tainted by fear mongery. The powerful wield their wands over the powerless and the miracle turns into a tragic comedy, a foot note of history.
“Remember when” is the sentiment we’ll all remember. I remember because I was one of the first to set up to bring in my energy to make this place shift towards a sustainable future and I acknowledge that Alberta Street has changed in ways nobody could have imagined.
It is a success story of the individuals that took their rights in their own hands not waiting for a hand out but come up with a creative approach, an alternative to generic consumerism where almost everything is produced in China causing this nation to be indebted to a dictatorship into the unforeseen future.
Leave Alberta alone I say let this social art project work itself out and then let’s learn from its good aspects. Copenhagen has its Christiana an enclave that is seen more like a laboratory for human development because the Danes’ understand that capitalism erodes the human spirit just as much as any other to narrow of a system that’s used to lead masses of people.
Humans need play grounds to explore their own outer and inner limits and that’s why Alberta Street was and is such a success. It is almost like a miracle mile maybe even longer than a mile that inspires the ones who walk it or set up with their creation; inspires awe in us and reminds us that we are not just animals that have to follow our herd instinct but can be distinct in our own rights.
Just like the jungles and rain forests harbor unknown miracle cures we don’t know yet what potential slumbers in the individual and only if we allow space to test it out will we reap the benefits of what makes us human in the first place, our innate curiosity and a need to challenge authority when it becomes to self indulgent.
