2012, Day 96 - Oyster

This photo is from my Saturday adventuring with Brian Matiash around the remaining industrial areas of northwest Portland.  Although the Pearl district has been expanding the boom that brought it from a seedy area of drug users and heavy industry into a yuppy haven has come to a near standstill.  It grew quickly and values climbed even faster but some of the veneer is cracking.  To my mind that isn't a bad thing, it isn't want Portland wants to be really, the Pearl is inhabited by people with money but without imagination, the eat and shop at chains instead of patronizing local business because the thought of something new and unfamiliar is unsettling to them and most the the establishments in their neighborhood need corporate backing to afford the absurd rents.  Who would have thought that there was such a thing as a yuppy ghetto?  Fortunately they are still hemmed in by the river and an impenetrable wall of industry that the city is dead set on preserving.  So as they some and go from their condos of glass and concrete in the luxury of their German cars the rest of us feel fortunate that they aren't brave enough to invade our neighborhoods and drive prices up and local businesses out.  The Pearl may be the most apt description imaginable because it is a pretty little thing with more shine than substance encased in an exterior that is rather unpleasant to most but what the pearl doesn't understand is that the shell is there for our protection as much as its own.

Canon 1Ds Mark II, Canon 16-35/f2.8L Mark II
35mm, f11, 1/200 sec @ 200 ISO