The Portland You Would Miss from a Car

I’m with a friend downtown today and she points ahead of us and says, “See the horsie?” And I look ahead and I see nothing. She keeps pointing and asking and I keep seeing nothing. I’m thinking, “How can I miss a whole horse?” and I’m panning around expecting she must mean one of the mounted police, since what other kind of horse are you going to see in the middle of downtown? And she keeps saying “On the sidewalk, on the sidewalk!” And good grief, that’s where I’m looking and I swear there ain’t no horse from here to Idaho. Finally I realize she’s looking sort of downward, and I see this plastic horse standing on the sidewalk about six inches tall. And she says, “And it ain’t going nowhere either.” I said, "What, you mean it’s glued to the sidewalk?” and she says “Let’s go see…” And we walk over to it and there’s this cable around the horse and the other end of it is attached to one of those rings that they’ve left in the curbs all over Portland from the olden days when they were needed for horse parking.

In fact, these rings were gradually being usurped by concrete workers as they repaired the sidewalks over the years until some citizens spoke out against it and said “NO! You can fix the sidewalks, but we want the horse rings left there when you’re done.” And so it was. And still is to this day.

And the other weird part of this story is this: My friend tells me the horse has been there for a whole week. I’ll be watching to see how long it stays, and will report accordingly.