I watched the TV show "Grimm" on occasion while it was still being broadcast. The creative types came up with some interesting monsters that would transform themselves into ordinary looking humans when they were off duty. But there was something about the show that I was reminded of recently.
One of the secondary characters made a casual remark, "Keep Portland weird." The first time it sounded like one of those lines that just get thrown into a script. The second time could have been a coincidence. But the third time was a clear signal that this line was one of the requirements from the city of Portland, Oregon, for the right to make the show there.
Then along comes this article -- Portland’s Disgraceful Anarchy -- which tells us just what "weird" means to a leftist city like Portland. It's a retelling of how storekeepers are frequently intimidated and sometimes robbed by transients.
Certain repeat offenders of the city’s vagrant population, along with other agitators, have issued death threats and broken into cars; one Columbia employee had to run into moving traffic after a stranger followed her and threatened to kill her.
But this is disgusting:
She also recalled that a surveillance camera caught a man defecating outside of her front door, and that this wasn’t the first time that it had happened.
Maybe those monsters from Grimm were real.
I believe it was the progressive metropolis of Austin, Texas, which first adopted the "Keep ___ Weird" slogan. Hopefully, the folks in Austin have more common sense than the government leaders of Portland when they strive to keep their city weird.
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1:41 PM 12/19/2017
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