Skip to main content
Last week, WW wrote about Portland's latest side hustle: collecting electric scooters and charging them at night ("The Juice is Loose," WW, Aug. 8, 2018). A local pharmacist, Sandy Ninh, says she makes around $50 a night picking up and "juicing" scooters for $5 to $10 per ride. Others, like the WW reporter who signed up to be a juicer, find that the gig is not as lucrative as tech moguls advertise it to be. Here's how readers weighed in.
Tom Moose, via Facebook: "You mean those rich tech moguls lied? Weird."
PdXPolicyWonk, via wweek.com: "The gig economy, sigh. What a rip-off. Skeezeball out-of-state startup tech bros rake in the cash for their already-wealthy investors while the local peasants working 'gigs' for them scramble for pennies."
Brittany 'Jazzy' Winston, via wweek.com: "I charge scooters. In about six days, I made $240. I spent an average of 1.5 hours picking up and about one hour or less dropping off. There are gas costs and electricity costs, of course, but I think even with that I've made money. It also gets me up early and I can get to the gym every morning. It's been great."
Shawna Kyler, via Facebook: "No way would I drive around Portland that much willingly. That's damn torture."
Capt'n, via wweek.com: "We talk about how green these things are, then we drive all night chasing them around? They aren't taking cars off the road, they are turning walkers into fat tourists."
Lorinda Pratt, via Facebook: "I saw someone putting scooters in the middle of the sidewalk. All three completely blocked the sidewalk, which is a federal [Americans With Disabilities Act] violation. These people need to be educated on how and where to put these scooters."
Wayne W via wweek.com: "Look, I'm first to say hooray for an alternative to oversized gas guzzling death machines, but I hope I'm just saying the obvious when I say that our infrastructure is simply not set up for these things right now."
Mel Paradise, via Twitter: "They've barely been out a week. Stop shitting on the new scooters!"
IBPDX via wweek.com: "How Portland green is that? Paying people to drive all over the city to collect scooters used by people who would otherwise have walked, biked or bused. I'm in San Jose, by the way, where they are out of control."
Britt D. K. Gratreak, via Facebook: "Wait, so you don't scoot all the scooters around on a bigger scooter? Lame."
CORRECTION
A review of Ruse Brewing's new brewpub ("Lighten Up," WW, Aug. 8, 2018) mistakenly referred to its location as the Sellwood neighborhood. It is actually located in Brooklyn.
WW regrets the error.