Portland Battles Skid Row Blight With Ban on Sale of Fortified Wines

A wine bottle was hurled through the window of Creag Hayes’ bike shop in an apparent protest of his role in the banning of fortified wines in this city’s Skid Row.

One merchant was so outraged by the ban that he threatened to buy a group of derelicts $500 worth of drinks at a tavern owned by the mayor’s family.

But later, that same merchant was out trying to raise money for the city’s programs for the homeless.

Hayes considered the window smashing a bit of symbolic vandalism by the “victims of the world”--his term for the transients who congregate across the street from his shop. He was the first to call for restrictions on fortified wines--the extra-strength, screw-top varieties popular with hard-core street drinkers--in the historic Old Town-Burnside district where most of the city’s homeless alcoholics hang out.

“People say, ‘Oh, yeah, you’re that wine-ban fanatic,’ ” Hayes says. “It was intended to be more reasonable than that.”

Created Stir

Whatever the intention, the unusual experimental ban initially created a stir among unhappy merchants who wanted winos out of their doorways, grocery stores angry about being singled out, social service agencies eager for a truly effective solution to homelessness and street people looking for the quickest, cheapest high.

Now, a year later, the City Council has recommended an indefinite extension of the ban, and everyone agrees that fewer drunks are passed out on city streets, although they don’t all agree on the reason.

Most say the measure has been effective only in combination with Mayor Bud Clark’s comprehensive program for the homeless, which, among other things, increased police patrols and authorized the neighborhood’s Hooper Center for Alcoholism Intervention to pick up all inebriated people lying on the streets, even those who don’t want to go.

‘Dramatic’ Impact

“The impact has been dramatic,” says Jean DeMaster, director of the Burnside Projects social service agency. “In the fall of 1985 you had a large concentration of people drinking on streets in groups in Old Town, and you had people sprawled out and sleeping on the sidewalks, so you had to step over them if you wanted to walk by. Now, you don’t see anybody sleeping on the streets.”

The wine “ban” actually is a restriction imposed by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission on the package store licenses of certain grocery stores where there was evidence that fortified wine sales were causing alcohol-related problems, says Steve Brinkhoff, the commission’s regulatory supervisor.

Fortified wines, which by definition contain more than 14% alcohol, include expensive dessert wines such as ports and sherries as well as $2-a-fifth brands such as Night Train Express and Thunderbird.

When the fortifieds came off the shelves in five Old Town markets last year, alcoholics went elsewhere in search of their favorite spirits, infuriating a new group of business people who never before had to deal with the problem. Extending the ban to at least four more stores caused many street drinkers to return to Old Town, but some did not.

Increased Awareness

“It made more people aware of the problems of the Burnside merchants and brought more shared responsibility,” DeMaster says. “When it was just in Old Town, people could close their eyes to it.”

“Our neighborhood is better off, but is the city better off?” asks Ray Bertrand, owner of Ray’s Grocery, one of the restricted stores. “They had them all corralled in one small area, and now they’re all over. I see faces a mile from here that never would have gotten off this street.”

The ban prompted some street drinkers to turn to other drink, or even to drugs, such as inexpensive black-tar heroin.

“I can walk downtown and where I used to see wine bottles, I see 80-proof vodka bottles,” says Richard Harris, manager of the Hooper center.

Still No. 1 With Some

But some still insist on their fortified wine fix. Across the street from Hayes’ Ciclo Sport Shop, Larry Cambela turned up his nose at the less potent wines available at the neighborhood stores. “Kid’s stuff,” he says, happily contemplating the bottle of fortified wine waiting for him a 10-minute walk away.

“I love the taste of it. It’s got a twang to it, halfway sweet and halfway sour,” says the 28-year-old native of Kansas City, Mo., who has been drinking fortified wine for 10 years. “If I took a taste of vodka, it would probably make me sick.”

The ban created something of an underground economy in fortified wine in Old Town, says Richard Meyer, executive director of the Burnside Community Council, which runs Baloney Joe’s shelter and services for the homeless.

“People buy a lot and cart it in in shopping carts and sell it black-market style,” Meyer says.

Meyer says his agency and others favor extending the ban to the entire city.

The restricted groceries, some of which balked at the idea at first, now generally support it, but they also would like to see it citywide, something Brinkhoff said the commission cannot legally do.

The mayor’s “12-Point Plan for the Homeless,” an attempt to address the underlying causes of street alcoholism, was a major issue in an unsuccessful recall effort against Clark.

“They said he was catering to the bums. It was despicable, and Bud never gave it any credence,” mayoral aide Charles Duffy says. The recall movement failed to collect enough signatures.

Widespread Praise

The mayor’s program won praise from many quarters. Police Capt. Tom Potter, whose Central Precinct includes the Old Town area, says beat officers report fewer alcohol-related problems in the area, and the “deputizing” of Hooper detox personnel has freed police to concentrate on more important matters.