82nd Avenue – Avenue of the Roses

82^nd Avenue moves you from normal to tacky and beyond.
It goes from North to Northeast to Southeast Portland, then into Clackamas County. Much of it is served by the 72 bus line on TriMet and various MAX stations will be options, that being highly dependent on where you want to go.
The north end of it is a little bit nice and can be closer to North Portland, with a couple of somewhat nice places to eat. But it hardly describes most of 82^nd Avenue.
You go down the road and there’s lots of silly rundown residential neighborhoods. Go down more and you’ll see some of the drunkards who live at a motel going from rent check to rent check.
Go really down into the heart of this beast and you’ll see a bunch of Asian food, car dealerships and fast food. That’s pretty much the story for the rest of it.
Not all of it’s bad, but none of it’s like the nicer neighborhoods. You can get some of the most delicious and authentic tacos, burritos and banh mi ever. Lots of the big box stores offer big discounts. But it looks just like any other city.
Go down after about Division and it starts getting very tacky and lowbrow until it reaches Brentwood-​Darlington. Sometimes, you’ll see the lowbrow element like a whale before you at sea. It will go right by you with pawn shops and things we can’t get into until we get into in bed.
At one point before Clackamas it gets somewhat interesting. There’s a lot of strip malls and fast food. There is a Trader Joe’s and Cartlandia near there.
82^nd Avenue isn’t bad, and provides lots of experiences making life better for lower incomes. But it’s role is limited.

It’s the American way street in my opinion. Everything you want at the tip of your fingers and relatively fast (minus the traffic or god forbid you are on the 72 bus line). Sleezy but convenient. Freaking hilarious to sit back and observe, annoying to commute through. Can’t live with it. Can’t live with out it!

When you look past the used cars and street corner slot machines there are a lot of great places to go.

One of those roads PDX Officials need to repair yesterday. It’s a heavy use road that’s more like a 4X4 trail than a road. My suspension is bad at best and i feel every pot hole. I drive this road like a low rider so i don’t bottom out. Still a good road to Cruz if you think Portlandia is NOT weird! A little more so at night.

Little known fact: Jay Z was actually mostly inspired by our very own 82^nd Ave, not just NY, when he wrote «Empire State of Mind.» Turns out, this street’s a concrete jungle where dreams are made, oh! There’s nothing you can’t do!
Seriously, you can do pretty much anything at some point along the Avenue of Roses, the longest continual commercial strip in the state of Oregon. It’s often made fun of for sex worker activity, endless rows of used car lots, and very un-​Portlandia groupings of chains like McDonald’s, Wal-​Mart, and the like. You know, those places that for those of us who live mainly in a 2-​mile bubble of close-​in Portland Proper, are mostly ignored until a trek east to 82^nd or north to Vancouver reminds us that, just like Santa Claus, they do exist.
«Welcome to the melting pot, corners where we’re selling rock»:

«Yellow Cab, Gypsy Cab, Dollar Cab, holler back»:

«I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can»:

The Avenue passes through 11(!) Portland neighborhoods before dipping into Clackamas. Look up the 82^nd Ave business association site and you’ll see the motto is Goodwill, Community, Prosperity. Not usually the top three things that come to mind when talking about this 6.5 mile stretch of road (typically more like hookers, drugs, and «massage» parlors), but I like where they’re going with that.
There’s an annual parade, which is sanctioned as an official Rose Festival event. The Avenue of Roses parade is a throwback to a time when that street really was lined with roses and single-​occupancy homes. Surprisingly, though, the parade’s only been around for about 5 years, while the great street itself has been around since the 1910s.
«Labor Day [Rose Festival] Parade, rest in peace Bob Marley»:

«Mommy took a bus trip, now she got her bust out»:

«Came here for school, graduated to the high life»:

See where I’m going with this? It’s all there, just keep your eyes open next time you’re cruising the Avenue, whether that be to buy a car, buy a hamburger, or to check into the Unicorn Inn for a night of filthy debauchery. Fubonn, Lion’s Eye, Tik Tok, Eastport Plaza, Clackamas Town Center, Ha VL, Agenda, Don Pedro, HK Café, Penzy’s Spices… you name it, you can get it. You can also get into a lot of trouble on this street, so be safe out there, dear reader.
«Good girls gone bad, city’s filled with them»:

These streets will make you feel brand new.
«Big lights will inspire you»:
Let’s hear it for 82^nd Ave, y’all.

Just a couple words of advice. Never buy a car on 82^nd avenue. But if it’s a lap dance at 11am on a Tuesday you want, come on down!

But where are the Roses?
Last Monday, I was southbound on the #72 bus, after transferring from the Max Red Line at the NE 82^nd Ave Station. And when I saw the sign for the «Hung Far Low» Chinese restaurant, it was time to get off at Division and transfer to the #4 bus. After this experience, I take it all back about occasionally needing a cab in Portland. I can really do public transit here!
When I visit Portland, I try to explore a «cute» new neighbourhood each time. On this trip, that was NE Alberta, Nob Hill, and a huge chunk of Division (between 25^th and my bus stop). On the other hand, the «Avenue of the Roses» is Portland’s longest continual commercial strip (from the Clackamas County line to PDX). Every City has one, and even Sustainable Portland is no exception.
Judging by my fellow bus travelers and the scenery going by, there’s a lot going on here. And it’s probably best that I was just passing through…

WTF is up with people just walking out in front of my car on this street? Oh yeah there are only like 3 cross walks on this entire strip of road! Even if there were more crosswalks people would still be too lazy to use them because it’s like every other day that I nearly hit some one walking out into the street 15 feet away from a crosswalk. What can you expect though, everyone in Portland jaywalks, even the Police (yes, I did see this today)

So now we’re apparently writing reviews of streets. Cool.
82^nd Ave is the best example of suburban sprawl probably in the entire state. In just a few miles, there are innumerable strip malls, a regular mall, a few movie theaters, grocery stores, and Blaze: The Romance Superstore.
That’s hot.

82^nd Avenue, Portland, Oregon. The not-​so-​aptly-​named Avenue of the Roses (why? Your guess is as good as mine). State Hwy 213. This street runs N – S along the eastern edge of Portland. 81^st Avenue is Portland, 83^rd Avenue is «the other side of the tracks».
There’s never a dull moment on 82^nd avenue. This is the classic transitional strip of used car lots, 24-​hour fast food joints, skeezy crack-​house motels, smoky diners, seedy bars, crusty strip joints, check-​cashing loan sharks, filthy dirty Mexican restaurants, numerous ghetto fabulous Wal-​Marts, Chinese restaurants, crappy apartments, transmission shops, trannies, and hookers. Anything you need, any time of day, even if it’s just sheer entertainment, 82^nd is the place.
Every city has one. In Seattle, for example, it’s the Hwy 99/​Aurora Ave corridor. All of the businesses and activities that the middle class folks don’t want in their backyard come here. It looks dirty, it smells dirty, and it’s well contained. A few blocks in either direction, and you’re back in regular old Portland. But 82^nd, and the little bubble around it, are in a different world altogether.
This area used to be a «prostitution free zone», a special exclusionary zone, because there was SO MUCH prostitution going on here. Did that work? No. Not at all. I drive home from work/​class on this street between Glisan and Division every night, and I see AT LEAST one hooker each evening… at least one.
Need a used car of questionable history and value? Want to purchase an automobile from a dealer that won’t be in existence next week? Need some crack? How about some over-​sized 4×4 rims? Maybe a gigantic Chinese marble statue of a lion? Gee, maybe you need some dirty hooker sex? No? Ok, how about some dim sum and heroin? How about a 6 am Bud Light and heart-​stopper bacon/​cheese/​sausage/​egg/​potato scramble from the Toc? 82^nd has everything you could never want, and more.
82^nd will never die. We could kill it 1,000 times and it would simply rise from its ashes, even more skanky than last time. 82^nd is like your meth-​head cousin… the one who keeps screwing up, relapsing, stealing your aunt’s tv to buy more meth, and is always really, really sleazy, but the family likes to keep him nearby in case they need him. That’s 82^nd. «It’s kind of an embarrassment, so we’ll just put it about 82 blocks outside of downtown. Hey, maybe it will scare away the people from Gresham?»
The traffic on this street is always terrible. For some reason, this is the one street in Portland that people refuse to EVEN GO THE SPEED LIMIT. It’s like a slow-​motion annoying-​ass time warp.
I live here. I live within 1,000 feet of this divine boulevard. If the «prostitution free zone» still existed, I would be living within its boundaries.
Jealous?
Oh you know it!