24 hours in downtown Portland: Nightlife returns, daytime festivities reign in shadow of continued violence

As the sun set Friday on downtown Portland, families with young children and dogs milled about near food carts, people waited in a long line at Voodoo Doughnut and naked cyclists sailed by on rides festooned with speakers and strobe lights.

The bright signs of more than a dozen bars illuminated the dark, with DJs bumping music onto the boisterous streets that make up an evolving area known as the city’s club district in the lower blocks on either side of West Burnside.

Police and FBI agents patrolled in greater numbers but kept a low-key presence after the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old woman and wounding of six others in a suspected drive-by shooting the weekend before.

Then shortly after midnight, someone shot and slashed a man near where the mass shooting occurred. Minutes later not far away, another man was dead in a stabbing.

By Saturday afternoon, city commissioners gathered to cut the ribbon on a new food cart pod and many of the storefronts that have been boarded up for months were wide open with small groups of shoppers and tourists popping in to browse.

Post-pandemic life has returned to downtown — a symbol of hope for civic revitalization and a place to come together to regroup after a year and a half of social isolation. But the aspirations and celebration come mixed with the reality of the city’s disturbing surge of violence.

Mayor Ted Wheeler on Saturday declined to address the shootings and stabbings that cast a shadow on what backers billed as the grand “reopening” of the city center, capped by a sing-along led by hometown favorites Pink Martini in Pioneer Courthouse Square, where hundreds attended.

Police planned a second night of increased presence as the festivities continued and crowds of mostly young people gathered once again to be entertained into the early hours.

“Today is the beginning of a new Portland,” City Council member Mingus Mapps told about 100 people who watched the christening of the new home to 18 food carts displaced from Southwest Alder Street for a new hotel.

As Mapps spoke, the Unipiper played his signature bagpipes and wheeled his unicycle around the pod dubbed the South Cart Blocks at Burnside and Southwest Park Avenue.

Later Mapps said the causes of the recent violence downtown have built throughout the pandemic and the solutions will take time, too.

“It took one and a half years for COVID to send us down this spiral of gun violence,” he said. “We’re not going to get back overnight.”

Bringing people back to the city center ultimately will help bolster public safety, he said.

“Gun violence has proliferated because the public has receded from public spaces,” Mapps said. “Getting people back out is part of the bigger vision.”

Young people flocking to clubs

Under a full moon Friday evening, tourists left a drag show at Darcelle XV with smiles on their faces, couples giddily shared electric scooter rides through alleyways and groups of young women corralled their friends as they stumbled from bar to bar.

McKenzie Abudakar and Molly McMullen, both 22 and recent college graduates, were waiting in line at Dixie Tavern and among those embracing the idea of getting back out.

They were experiencing Portland’s nightlife for the first time. They hit the drinking-age milestone during the pandemic and were antsy to go out.

The two graduated from Portland high schools in 2017. They heard about the killing of Makayla Maree Harris a week ago in the shooting along Third Avenue near Harvey Milk Street, just a few blocks away from Dixie Tavern at 32 N.W. Third Ave.

“It’s a sad truth to be privileged enough to pretend like it’ll never happen to you,” McMullen said. “You hear about it and it’s scary. But I feel safe until something makes me feel unsafe.”

Jean Fleck, a 24-year-old from Southeast Portland, was happy to hang out with a group of his friends as bars opened again. He said they feel safe because they’re vaccinated against COVID-19.

He said he’s more worried about his car getting broken into than he is about shootings.

“We’ve been seeing cops circling the block, it actually makes me feel less safe,” Fleck said. “If police are coming out for a good reason, then that makes sense, but if it’s just a decision coming from people in power, I question the need.”

With Saturday’s fatal stabbing, homicides now number 53 in Portland -- on pace to hit 100 if they continue at the same rate. That would eclipse the record of 70 homicides set in 1987. Most of the people killed this year died in shootings. Almost half the victims were Black.

Police Chief Chuck Lovell said he would add more officers to downtown patrols and pair some with FBI agents on Friday and Saturday nights in the aftermath of last weekend’s shooting. He acknowledged “almost nightly gun violence” while saying police “want people to feel safety” as businesses return to usual.

The party atmosphere prevailed Friday night until early Saturday when someone shot a man in the lower abdomen and then knifed his shoulder near Southwest Fifth Avenue and Washington Street. The man went to the hospital with serious injuries but was expected to survive, police said. A short time later, a man was found with stab wounds lying in the street near Southwest Third Avenue and Pine Street, police said. He later died at the hospital.

Daryl Turner, executive director of the Portland Police Association, said the Police Bureau is glad to get the additional help from the FBI but needs officers who are familiar with the downtown and Old Town districts to work in those areas.

Retirements, resignations and budget cuts have reduced police ranks and “one big incident shuts us down because of our lack of resources, and that is a travesty,” Turner said. “Crimes of opportunity will always happen. People are carrying guns more because they know we’re not out there with enough numbers.”

Some of the Portland officers who were on duty to help downtown were called away to respond Friday night to the fatal shooting of a Clark County sheriff’s deputy, so police didn’t have as many officers as planned.

Turner said he will press for more money for the Police Bureau budget in fall. The bureau has lost about 125 officers in the past year and more retirements are anticipated this year.

“As long as city officials turn a blind eye to this,” he said, “Portlanders will not feel safe downtown.”

‘We’re alert. We’re not afraid.’

Azim Patel wore a bulletproof vest under his shirt as he drove downtown Friday evening to open his bar ahead of a busy weekend.

Buying the vests for himself and his employees at Fuse Bar on Southwest Third Avenue “wasn’t a part of the business plan,” he said.

After a year of off-and-on closures, COVID restrictions and unrest during racial justice protests, bars like his are now dealing with shootings and violence that may limit people from coming downtown.

“We can deal with vandalism and whatever’s been thrown at us, but this is serious when we talk about lives being taken,” Patel said. “If the police are just hanging out, not stopping anybody, not talking to anybody. I don’t mind that, especially if it’s going to discourage people from dying and getting hurt, and businesses being affected because of the negative energy.”

Rick Van Zandt, a bouncer at Mary’s Club on Southwest Broadway, said he has testified in multiple court hearings about crimes he’s witnessed outside the strip club.

The violence downtown is worse than it was in 2019 before the pandemic, he said.

Random Dead, a bouncer at Dante’s, said there was a shooting in the parking lot behind the club on Burnside earlier this summer and he recently watched someone pull an AR-15 from their car after a fight inside the venue spilled onto the street. Luckily, that person drove off without incident.

“Shootings feel like an every weekend thing now,” he said.

“It’s always crazy down here, though,” he said. “Even during the daytime, people are tweaking, walking around naked. It’s sad. There needs to be an intermediary for people who have mental illness or addiction issues, so they’re not shot or hurt.”

Several clubs downtown have hired armed private security guards. Bouncers use metal detectors, pat people down, check for weapons and sometimes deny admission to people who are being rowdy or not following dress code.

Dan Lenzen, owner of Dixie Tavern, said he wants Portland police to return to patrol the area regularly on the weekends and allow street closures.

In years past, the Police Bureau’s Central Precinct assigned a detail of officers to the area dubbed the “entertainment district” -- a fluid neighborhood without strict parameters but mostly known as the bars and clubs in a four-block section from West Burnside to Northwest Everett and Northwest Second Avenue to Fourth Avenue.

At one time, at least a dozen officers patrolled the area on foot and by car, closing off streets of Old Town to create a safe area for pedestrians.

The pandemic-caused closures of several clubs in the neighborhood have pushed crowds into fewer bars and created lines down the block, Lenzen noted.

For the time being, he’s taken matters into his own hands by putting up barricades blocking Northwest Couch Street from cars and forcing drivers to slow down at pedestrian walkways on Northwest Third Avenue.

Before the pandemic, those measures were effective at deterring shootings, fights and pedestrians being hit by cars, he said. When police patrolled on foot, he said, they typically didn’t bother the downtown partiers. Their presence alone, Lenzen said, kept crime at bay.

“We’re alert, we’re not afraid,” Lenzen said, speaking on behalf of other club owners downtown and their security efforts. “We’re taking precautions, and we’re very experienced at this.”

Around the corner from Dixie Tavern, the new owner of Shake Bar said he has increased security after a fight in June inside the bar led to a shootout that injured at least two people and sprayed bullets into eight cars outside.

“We tried to quickly stamp out any issues, but we can’t control everyone,” Angel Bibiano said. “We’re just trying to bring back that safe environment like it used to be. We want people to come out here and have fun. People like to point the finger at downtown, but there’s gun violence all over Portland.”

Staff writers Maxine Bernstein and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh contributed to this report.

--Savannah Eadens; seadens@oregonian.com; 503-221-6651; @savannaheadens