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Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:07 pm

John -- if you post over on the FB "PDX Vanagons" and "Portland Vanagons" you may get a good response.

Fri May 04, 2018 3:44 pm

mankowski wrote: Just seeing this for the first time and it sounds great! There is also a west coast regional gathering for Porsche 914's in Forest Grove that same weekend, so I guess I have the great fortune of getting to decide which gathering to join! Thanks for organizing!!

Mankowski - If you want to go, please send me a Samba PM to confirm. Until I get that, you're not registered.

Fri May 04, 2018 3:45 pm

WestyBob wrote: John -- if you post over on the FB "PDX Vanagons" and "Portland Vanagons" you may get a good response.

Yep. It's about time for that.

CJ

Fri May 04, 2018 9:03 pm

jimf909 wrote: climberjohn wrote: Wowzer, does anyone read this thread anymore?
I have more spots open at my campout.
Let me know if you want to come via PM.

-CJ

Looks like fun!

Is it verboten to cross-post this to the Seattle and Olympia threads? My guess is that some WA state folks may be interested (if you’ll have us :D ).

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...mp;start=0

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=657640&start=0

Jim

Happy to have visitors from the north part of the Shire. Just leave your Sounders shirts at home and you are welcome. PM me if you want to go.

-CJ

Sun May 27, 2018 5:09 pm

Hi: I sent a PM on May 6 I think and never heard a word.....any spots still left?? Regards Larry

Sat Aug 22, 2020 9:13 am

Hey all! My family and I moved to Portland about a year ago and have been looking to meet some fellow Westy owners to hang out with (socially distant of course), talk shop with, and spend some weekends under the stars.

Sat Aug 22, 2020 9:43 am

I finally got my 87 back on the road this summer. I to would like to attend some sort of get together. There are some nice parks all through the Columbia Gorge, from rooster rock to three mile canyon out east. The latter is semi desert, Free camping and posable to have a small camp fire. Lets get together somewhere. Mark

Sat Aug 22, 2020 9:47 am

Look up the WetWesties. They are a great group and fun at campouts

Sat Aug 22, 2020 8:42 pm

If you're on the Book of Faces, look up the PDX Vanagons and Portland Vanagons groups. That seems to be where a lot of the local action has migrated to for some reason...

Sat Aug 22, 2020 10:37 pm

tristessa wrote: If you're on the Book of Faces, look up the PDX Vanagons and Portland Vanagons groups. That seems to be where a lot of the local action has migrated to for some reason...

How dare you Tristessa :lol: plenty of happy Vans here without Face Crack. Sure it might look like only buses but not. Ugh. I miss Monday Lab nights. 2020 blows.

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=678328&highlight=lucky

Sun Aug 23, 2020 6:55 pm

Well, yeah .. 2020 has sucked in terms of in-person stuff and camping, pretty much regardless of where you are in the country or whether you have a Bay, Split, Vanagon, EV or even (gasp!) a Sprinter.

Still, the Portland/PDX Vanagon groups on Facecrack seem to still be hoppin' even with COVID going on. Weird...

Mon Nov 30, 2020 3:28 pm

Portland tops this list, thefts (per 100,000 residents) nationwide.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/west-coast-cities-lead-nation-153000905.html

Mon Nov 30, 2020 6:14 pm

[quote="campism"]Portland tops this list, thefts (per 100,000 residents) nationwide.

I see a ton of vans going missing in the Portland area on the VanAlert app. I bet Portland is also up there with Vanagons per capita, almost every block you drive has one parked.

Mon Nov 30, 2020 8:00 pm

campism wrote: Portland tops this list, thefts (per 100,000 residents) nationwide.
The Portland Police Bureau gives basically zero fucks about property crime including auto thefts, and the thieves all know it. With this being 2020, their excuses have ranged from "staffing shortages/budget cuts" to "COVID" to "protests/ 'riots' " to "funding cuts" to (probably) "stubbed my toe on the coffee table", but the PPB's DGAF attitude pre-dates all of those factors. They're useless, they've been useless for years, and with the vast majority of the Portland Police (over 3/4 of them) not even living in Portland, why would they care? It doesn't effect most of them one way or the other.

The police union had a "work slowdown" this month when the police oversight board ballot measure overwhelmingly passed (over 80% of voters approved).. and if they hadn't said anything about it, I don't think anybody would have noticed their temper tantrum. I haven't even noticed if they've gotten over their snit and gone back to the regular levels of not doing their jobs.

Mon Nov 30, 2020 9:32 pm

Aside from the numerous issues with the pdx police, auto theft was essentially a non crime in the eyes of prosecutors up until very recently (2 years ago?)

Willamette week did a nice write up on this a while back, but the law that allowed folks to claim ignorance as to the original of the stolen car they were driving, and get away with it, was amended.
Previously the police would have to more or less watch you steal it, and that's assuming they could manage to give two fucks to start with.

So yeah, portland was uniquely positioned to take that #1 spot

Mon Nov 30, 2020 11:02 pm

Respect gets respect, and disrespect gets disrespect too.

They get tired of apprehending, chasing down criminals who will be out on the street again in a matter of hours.
All that effort (and risk of their own lives) for nothing, nobody cares for their efforts, their risks, or even their pride of a job well done.
This is a management problem, not a worker problem.
And we are a large part of "the management".

I think we can count on any police who want to do a good job, will simply leave Portland (same problem in Seattle).
This is producing a 'brain drain' where the police who remain in the profession will be "bottom of the barrel", and they will recruit more "bottom of the barrel".
Experienced police remaining only because our cities will have to pay high wages to cover for the disrespect and the risk.
Those who have pride in their work will go elsewhere.
Somewhere that appreciates a difficult job well-done.

Insurance prices will raise everyones costs.

It's like our world is being run by children (the politicians and voters).
Who could be surprised?

Vanagon folks get your kill-switches.
You need the style that uses a latching relay.
Where every time you turn off the van, it goes automatically into 'safe mode'.
And EVERY time you start it you must first bump a hidden button to tell the car you are the 'approved driver'.
You bump this button every time, you won't forget after the first couple days.

Mon Nov 30, 2020 11:22 pm

for real though, portland was uniquely situated to end up atop the throne there.
a homelessness epidemic and the drug use that may entail, and most importantly - autotheft essentially being decriminalized.

Oregon Lawmakers Close Loophole That Allows Easy Car Theft in Portland

Quote:
House Bill 2328 passed without a single nay in either chamber of the Oregon Legislature. The bill makes it easier for prosecutors to prove that a person is guilty of stealing a car given certain types of evidence, such as discovering the person behind the wheel of a stolen vehicle while possessing burglary tools.

...

Portland had the third-highest rate of motor vehicle theft of any major city in the nation. The rate had increased by 50 percent in the three years following the 2014 appellate court decision, far outpacing the growth of any other type of crime.

In Portland, You Can Steal Cars Over and Over—and Get Away With It.

Quote:
At least 102 people in the Portland area have been arrested multiple times in the past year for car theft, though half of 2017's cases were never prosecuted.

...

"It's the same people we arrest over and over and over," says Portland police Sgt. Brian Hughes, who oversees the East Precinct night shift. "They're not being properly held accountable for their crimes."

...

Hughes and others say this all changed in 2014, when the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in a case that has made prosecuting car thefts very, very difficult.

The case involved Jerrol Edwin Shipe, a 49-year-old former retirement home worker who was arrested in 2012 while sitting in a stolen truck in Washington County. He was convicted but appealed the verdict, claiming he didn't know it was stolen and that he had gotten the truck from "a friend named Richey."

Evidence at the scene suggested Shipe knew he was driving a stolen truck. He had bolt cutters, multiple sets of keys, and a locked case labeled—amazingly—"Crime Committing Kit." The truck had other stolen property inside. The key Shipe had been using to start the engine did not belong to the truck.

Shipe's appeal claimed that prosecutors could not prove he had "knowingly" taken possession of a stolen vehicle. Prosecutors argued that the evidence should have made it obvious to any reasonable person that the truck had been stolen.

The Oregon Court of Appeals judges ruled in Shipe's favor. Chief Appellate Judge Erika Hadlock wrote in the July 23, 2014, decision that the state was asking the court "to accept too great an inferential leap" in determining that Shipe knew the truck was stolen when he took possession of it. (Hadlock declined comment to WW on her ruling.)

It set a precedent: Carrying tools associated with car break-ins or even operating a car with the wrong key was not enough evidence to prove that someone sitting in a stolen car knew that it was hot.

...

Ryan Lufkin, a lanky Multnomah County deputy district attorney, is the DA office's designated liaison on motor vehicle theft to state legislators. That means he has spent a lot of time explaining to lawmakers why his office can't successfully prosecute car thieves.

"They are concocting a story—no matter how implausible," Lufkin says. "'I bought it from my friend Zach.' 'Who is Zach?' 'I don't know his last name,'" Lufkin recalls. "Or, 'I borrowed it from my friend Zach. I'll leave it around 3rd and Main, and he'll come and get it some day.'"

Tue Dec 01, 2020 2:46 am

Sodo wrote:

They get tired of apprehending, chasing down criminals who will be out on the street again in a matter of hours.
All that effort (and risk of their own lives) for nothing, nobody cares for their efforts, their risks, or even their pride of a job well done.
This is a management problem, not a worker problem.
And we are a large part of "the management"..

Boo f’n hoo.

Roofing is about 5x as dangerous a job, but roofers don’t stomp their feet and demand the population call them brave and handsome for doing the job that they signed up to do, and that they’re paid for. Nor do other first responders.

Not only that, but Portland cops’ starting salary is higher than the highest salary a PPS teacher can *ever* make in their career.

PPA is a huge part of the problem too, and the lack of any meaningful connection to the community. The result is an occupying force that resents the population. I think we can all agree on that.

Basic measures (like a club plus a kill switch) go a long way in theft prevention in my experience. Luckily I’ve got off-street parking for the van these days!

Tue Dec 01, 2020 10:44 am

Wonder if decriminalization would change the city's demographics?
....as police move out, criminals move in.
Like gentrification changes the character of a neighborhood, except more vibrant, and alive, right?

Mikesarge wrote: roofers don’t stomp their feet and demand the population call them brave and handsome for doing the job that they signed up to do, and that they’re paid for.

Is that what police say? What I hear is stuff like "we catch people doing this stuff all the time and the next day they're out doing it again and again. We know who's doing most of this stuff but can't really stop them."

This is a management problem and we are the managers.
And Seattle idolizes Portland like its wild sibling....

Tue Dec 01, 2020 8:05 pm

So what’s your solution? Throw more money at the violent thugs who tear gas neighborhoods and beat people up for... standing in the street? We’ve been doing that since at least WWII here in Portland. How has it worked so far?

Seems like more cops would just double-down on these undisputedly terrible feedback loops, right? I’d wager that investment in community resources and infrastructure has a much higher return on investment. This is borne out by the data. Maybe if we treated our most vulnerable populations like people, and put resources toward resolving issues of inequality, houselessness, and mental health, people wouldn’t be driven to do “this stuff” in an effort to not starve to death in the streets. See, e.g., any industrialized nation that spends less than half its GDP on infrastructure for violence.

Maybe it’s time we address root causes of these issues, rather than sending a poorly-trained bully with a gun and no accountability to address every single issue in this city. It’s idiotic.

But what do I know. More cops, more military, more guns, more violence! at some point that formula will quell the population, and people too poor to afford basic needs for any number of reasons will, uh, disappear? Has that worked in any country on the entire planet?