Yesterday on my foray to the Fred Meyers mega-store to buy groceries I stopped for gas but wasn’t able to take some photos without being noticed which I thought would tell an interesting story. A man and woman, apparently living on the street, were pushing their belongings in wheel chairs. Generally the belongings transport of preference for Portland’s large homeless population (read article) like elsewhere is shopping carts.
The shopping carts are most likely purloined from various stores. The theft of carts prompted Fred Meyers (a subsidiary of Krogers) to put high tech locks on the wheels of all their shopping cart and sensors around their parking lots. They activated if someone tried to remove them from the store property. (Read story.)
I wondered where these people got their wheel chairs. I hope they weren’t stolen. The American Red Cross, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army give them away, but even so they are meant for people who are physically disabled and these two people had no difficulty walking and the two chairs were heaped with their belongings.
I couldn’t think of a reasonably acceptable ethical way they could have gotten these wheel chairs unless they got them from a dumpster.
I thought “oh well, there's a lost opportunity to take some photos documenting an interesting aspect of street life in Portland.”
On the way home from shopping I saw a man walking shirtless just as I was leaving the store. I didn’t see that his buuttcrack was visible until I got home and enlarged the photo.
There wasn't any traffic so I pulled to the side of the road and took the photo in my illustration with my iPhone.
It was 62° and breezy so I didn't think he was simply hot. He was carrying a pair of Nikes so perhaps he had been at a gym or jogging. Somehow I doubt it.
Unfortunately I didn’t see him from the front so I couldn't tell if he was wearing a MAGA hat.
Here’s another very different buttcrack photo which I took at Little Harbor Beach in Wareham, MA. I find it a tender affectionate photo.
Click here to enlarge
To round out the photo diary here are some nature photos of eagles that perched on a tall tree across from my house:
I like to share photos of my life, some mundane and some not, with my friend from Massachusetts who has yet to visit me. I also like street photography, for example I took these at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world.
Click here to enlarge.
These are attempts at being artsy fartsy (enlarge):
And of course my favorite subjects, Mac and Duff:
