I have a new favorite columnist in Portland. His name is B. Scott Taylor and he's a GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™ (I checked. Semi-legitimate news source GoLocalPDX actually spent the time and money to trademark the hilariously dorky title MINDSETTER™). According to his bio on every column he publishes, Taylor is an "Internet millionaire" and "disruptive force". There are only two places it's cool to say you're an Internet millionaire: the opening sequence of Shark Tank and at the bottom of a blog complaining about kids stealing chicken.

That's what happened yesterday when B. Scott released an excellent tirade against the moral decline of this city based on his experience buying a sandwich at Safeway (the one in the Pearl, natch. He's an Internet millionaire, remember?). While there, he watched a "street kid" who "could be a tweeker, but not obvious" steal a dollar's worth of chicken wings—among other skills, his years of millionairing have taught him how to spot tweekers, even the not-obvious ones.

The chicken was just a symptom of a greater problem, and B. has no problem jumping from there to the "hellhole" that was New York City in 80s. If you lived there/then, as B. reminds us, you know these truths:

1. If you rode the subways you would get mugged.
2. If you parked your car on the street it would get broken into. If you left it there for more than a day, you wanted it to get stolen.
3. If you walked in Central Park at night as a female you were going to get raped.

If private businesses continue to ignore petty chicken theft, it's only a matter of time before our precious Pearl District has a 100% crime rate like New York had.

Scotty B. investigated the root of New York's magical turnaround: he once asked a police officer what caused the drop in crime and, shockingly, that guy credited the police! Sure, the Broken Windows theory of criminology is highly contentious and used to back racist policies. And sure, other theories vary widely including the idea that lead paint caused the crime (I asked a painter and he said it was definitely that). But I believe Broseph S. T.—he's made a lot of money and lived in at least two cities.

Portlanders, we can't just stand by while this terrible scourge destroys our great condo developments! If you don't act now and beat up a street kid, you may end up saying, "I didn't speak up when they came for our chicken wings, because I don't eat chicken wings. But then they came for my free side of chips and I didn't say anything because the non-obvious tweekers had taken over the Pearl and were aggressively marginalizing millionaires like me." It's time to stand up and fight back.

Originally from somewhere else, Alex Falcone moved to Portland in 2007. He's a comedian, writer, millionaire in Second Life, eco-juggernaut-hero, stiff breeze, and THINKPLANNER™.