Instagram Account “Pdxscootermess” Is Portland’s Photo Archive of Dead Scooters

The creator of the account declined to share their name for fear of getting “doxxed by a band of angry skoochers.”

(WW Staff)
By Elise Herron

If there's one thing smartphone-clad masses love documenting as much as latte art and bathroom selfies it's scooter carnage.

That's what prompted one Portlander to start an Instagram account titled @pdxscootermess, which looks for "any and all evidence of scooter (and bikeshare) chaos in Portland Oregon."

The creator of the account, who declined to share their name for fear of getting "doxxed by a band of angry skoochers," is also the person behind scootersintheriverpdx.com, a website that counts how many scooters are in the Willamette River. (The unofficial count is now up to six.)

"I'm a downtown office drone, a bike commuter (who also owns a car) and a resident of Portland for about 15 years," the account creator told WW in an email. "I'm not anti-scooter, but having recently rented a Bird while on vacation at Venice Beach, I know first hand how easy it is to annoy everyone else on the sidewalk."

So far the account has only ten posts, which show scooters ending up in dumpsters and porta potties and parked in inconvenient places like bus stops.

Pdxscootermess is similar to California-based Instagram account @birdgraveyard, which claims to have started after "companies dropped off thousands of unsupervised scooters on Venice Beach without permission and people immediately began throwing them in the water." In its bio, the account asks for submissions from scooter users around the nation: "if a bird or lime scooter has died, please send us pictures or video so we can honor its death. RIP"

Related: California-Based Instagram Account "Bird Graveyard" Chronicles Abandoned Scooters Around the Nation

In a short time, @birdgraveyard has gathered over 33,000 followers and attracted coverage in national outlets like the Los Angeles Times and Vice.

Pdxscootermess has only 106 followers so far. But it's creator says, "Who can resist staring at a good ol' fashioned trainwreck?"

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