While the titans of Wall Street and their minions in Washington, D.C., prepare a $700 billion bailout of the financial-services industry, one fact is already taken for granted—average Portlanders won’t get a dime of relief or any more certainty about their own future.

Since the fall of Fannie Mae and AIG from 3,000 miles away may be hard to wrap your head around, WW visited Northeast Sandy Boulevard last week, cruising from 16th to 82nd avenues to find out how the economic collapse is affecting business at home.

We don’t expect that four-mile stretch to figure in the mental map of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. But Portland’s everyman street gave us a snapshot of what’s happening to the kinds of industries that make our local economy hum—from strip clubs and record shops to cashing in bottles and cans.

If Sandy offers any lesson for investors, it may be this: music over mortgages.