Spirits were high toward the back of the line, despite gray skies and the promise of a full workday (and then some) spent idling in Portland’s South Park Blocks.
Leigh and Kazon Valentine — a husband-and-wife duo who took the train from Seattle for this very occasion and booked a night at a hotel downtown — sat settled in a pair of folding chairs, ready for a long Friday of waiting. Behind them, hundreds of other eager queuers did the same, at least one who’d arrived around sunrise.
“If we have to sit in this line for three days,” Leigh Valentine said, “We’re good for it.”…