Peterson’s On Yamhill

The Peterson’s on Yamhill fails to distinguish itself just as the one in the Portland Galleria does. There is a wide selection of packaged items, but not of selling hot food as chains and local convenience stores alike often do. Some items do not have their price displayed, denying their customers a standard courtesy and transparency mechanism. However, a MAX Station is right by.
I have walked by several times, but I have never gone into this location until now. There are way better convenient stores. A thin-​bottle of soda and beef jerky was about $ 3.60. This is competant at what it sets out to do, but that’s not enough around here.
Choose your convenience stores wisely.

I was at a loss for words to describe the aroma found here, and then it hit me: warmed over death. I survived, you might not be so lucky.
When I got back to the office, I gave our vending machine a hug.

The interior is cramped. You can’t take three steps without having to squeeze through a chokepoint of shelves and coolers. And those coolers make this place unbearable in warm weather, see the heat they remove from their interior has to go somewhere. In this case it goes into the rest of the store, which isn’t air conditioned. In the middle of summer even before the sun comes up, Peterson’s on Yamhill is a sauna.
Prices are high, high, high. The Snickers I needed before the gym today was $ 1.09. And it was half melted. You fail, Peterson’s, you fail hard.

There appears to be a general perception among 16 — 25 year olds that they are somehow indestructibly bulletproof.
It’s the reason they’ll condone living in sketchy places, hitting up seedy nightlife spots, or taking those unconfirmed shortcuts through dark alleys in foreign places… Nothing could possibly go wrong… right?
And I’m sure that it’s this mentality that really helps out Peterson’s and maybe one of the reasons as to how they manage to stay in business.
When the downtown empties out at night, and dim max stops are teeming with folks you’d really rather not have a lengthy chat with, one can’t suggest that this questionable looking place is what you’d call a destination.
But once inside, where the number of signs and posters and banners rivals the amount of actual products they carry, there is a bit of an understanding in the forced front. It’s a raw mix of a little bit of everything (magazines, snacks, smokes, soda, beer & wine, lotto, phone cards, bottled water) to accommodate the diverse group of people who stop by looking for something (students, transients, professionals, tourists).
You can count on generally friendly guys behind the counter. They’re really down to earth and the unofficial «eyes on the street» for the Yamhill Max Station.
It’s an interesting cross section of those looking for a conversation with someone who will entertain it (if only even for a moment), a bottle of Diet Coke for the ride home, protection from the elements, or the characters who inhabit it.
Because not everyone wants to play a game of urban Russian Roulette.