Most people in Portland have a story that illustrates how the city has changed in the past decade from twee Portlandia into a doom-loopy dystopia.
For real estate developer Lauren Noecker, it was the morning she walked from her loft in the Pearl to her office in Northwest and spotted an agitated man wandering around with a butcher knife. He clearly wasn’t a chef on his way to a brunch shift. She called 911, and the dispatcher asked her which “direction” the knife was pointed.
“I thought, ‘How is that relevant?’” Noecker says. “He’s walking around with a butcher knife at 9 in the morning in the Pearl. If this is what people want, maybe I’m in the wrong city.”…