Pia Hansen: In a vibrant downtown, some rough edges welcome

Earlier this week, I walked over to the opening of the police substation on South Browne and Pacific. It’s an interesting neighborhood, what with a winery on one side of the street, a homeless shelter on the other, old apartment buildings, some businesses and warehouses, all around the same intersection.

I walked over there through downtown alleys.

Yes, I felt totally safe – there was pretty much no one else walking there but me.

An old man was sitting by the railroad viaduct, his face the color of well-done prime rib. I figured he’d ask me for money. He didn’t.

Instead he said: “You people are getting on my nerves,” raising his voice like he was making a proclamation. I was the only one there.

There’s a lot of broken glass in this town – ice blue cubes of crunched car windows, green and brown shards from broken beer bottles and the occasional smashed clear windowpane all sparkled in the spring sun on my way.

The closer I got to Browne, the more trash and graffiti there was.

Outside the COPS station a small crowd of well-wishers, police officers and city and housing officials had gathered. People wearing crisp dress shirts, spring dresses and designer sunglasses milled around on the sidewalk.

Mayor Dennis Hession was there, talking about the importance of safety and crime reduction, and promising lights and better safety at the skate park under the freeway, nearby.

Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick was there, too, saying that police presence does indeed reduce crime. The substation comes with two new bike patrol units and the promise of two more later this week.

Kitty-corner, behind the fence around the House of Charity, a more randomly dressed crowd had gathered. Dogs barked and people milled around there, too. Not for the photo op, but waiting for a meal or a bed.

The contrast between the two groups gathered on opposite city corners was huge, perfectly illustrating where the rub is when it comes to downtown living: Not everyone living downtown lives in a half-million dollar condo, but so far, it’s not like there’s a lot of communication going on across income brackets.

Some gentrification is to be expected – we’re already seeing that – but hopefully, over time, a wide variety of people will be found downtown.

Social service agencies are clustered downtown, making it easy for clients to gain access to services, even if they don’t have reliable transportation. This approach makes a lot of sense to me, but to some building owners, downtown dwellers and developers it’s a problem.

They’d prefer a spotless downtown, where no one behaves in a socially unacceptable manner, as it’s so often put by those who claim to know what socially accepted behavior is.

The kind of downtown where there are no panhandlers, no drunkards and the worst spots on the sidewalk are left by someone spilling a $4 latte. The spotless people would prefer a city void of the needy and the poor, the weird and the transient.

I don’t. An interesting urban environment is safe, but it has some grittiness to it – if you can’t deal with people who are different from yourself, move into a gated community where you’ll run into absolutely no one but your preapproved neighbors.

As I headed back to the newspaper, I couldn’t help but look for the old guy I’d seen on the way over. He was still there, sitting in exactly the same spot. I made eye contact; it looked like he recognized me so I steeled myself for another verbal onslaught.

“You sure dressed pretty today,” he said.