Come for the vibrance, stay for the ambulance

An alert reader points us to a story in the Trib about a new slice of classic Portlandia. Alas, it's behind a paywall, but what you can see even without paying is pretty clear: The city has blocked off Northwest Couch Street between Third and Fourth Avenues in Old Town as one of the bureaucrats' precious "public plazas."

Man, they have got be kidding. That's one of the roughest streets in the whole town. People die there on a regular basis. They expect normal people to go down there, plop down at a picnic table, and hang out?

It's all to please the car-haters, I guess, and thus to try to save the paycheck of the embattled city commissioner, Jo Ann With the Bullhorn, who's in charge of the whole "transportation" pop stand. But it's beyond stupid. Let's hope no innocent person actually takes the dopey bureaucrats up on this. God help the tourists who don't know any better.

The City Council can blow all the smoke they want, but we've kind of reached the point where blood is on their hands. The answer to the crisis in Old Town is not to create more crime victims down there.