Montgomery Pride

In a post back in January I mentioned something about there being another City Repair street mural on a closed section of SW Montgomery St., on the Portland State campus, which I was bound to do a post about sooner or later. So here are a few photos of Montgomery Pride, on the block of Montgomery between 6th & Broadway. The blurb for it on the City Repair project map describes it as "a design pattern that celebrates LGBTQ Pride, the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, and Marsha P. Johnson" and the 2019 painting of it as "an event that would bring together the LGBTQ community, Urban Planning community, and the PSU community to turn an unattractive street into an enriching temporary public event space."

The street closure happened as part of the university's major renovations to the business school building next door. The business school was the newest and swankiest building on campus when I was a student circa 1990 -- a student environmental group I was involved with tried to schedule meetings there, strictly for the nice cushy chairs -- but it couldn't compete with the new engineering school buildings, facilities-wise, and that simply wouldn't do. But there's always donor money available for re-swank-ifying business schools, and the one at PSU has reclaimed its rightful place as the newest, shiniest, swankiest, most blindingly metallic edifice on campus. Across Montgomery, for contrast, is the brutalist University Services Building, built in 1970 and seemingly unchanged since then (except for some late-2000s public art on the east side of the building).