How rough are Portland's roads? So bad that a group of self-described anarchists are taking things into their own hands.

Pitting the city's two mottos -- the unofficial "Keep Portland Weird" and the municipal "The City That Works" -- against one another, a group calling itself Portland Anarchist Road Care says state neglect is to blame for the condition of the streets.

The group, working anonymously and with one wearing a mask in photos, only claims to have patched a handful of potholes on Southeast Salmon Street during an outing in late February. But an administrator of the Facebook page said the group is planning more actions. Part of the motivation, the group says on its Facebook page, is to squash perceptions that anarchists only break windows and block roads.

"As anarchists, we seek to bring about a society in which coercive hierarchies, such as government and capitalism ... no longer exist," a member of the group told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an email. "To be exceptionally clear, anarchists do not desire chaos, we desire freedom and equality."

The group said it's is now exploring alternatives to patching potholes, including mobilizing people to fix roads in their own neighborhoods and increasing pothole visibility, particularly around bike routes.

"By creating structures to serve the same purpose as state structures, such as our organization, we have the ability to show that government is not necessary for society to function, that we can have a truly free and liberated society," the email said.

Residents of pockmarked cities occasionally take on pothole repairs in small acts of municipal disobedience, or to try to draw the city's attention. There have been reports of people planting flowers in potholes, filling them with sprinkles or encircling them in lewd drawings in hopes they'll draw a faster official response.

But Portland's establishment transportation officials advise against taking direct action.

"If it's a city maintained street, then folks should call us and have the professionals do it," said Dylan Rivera, a spokesman for the Portland Bureau of Transportation. "It's generally not safe for folks to be out in the street doing an unauthorized repair like this."

Rivera couldn't point to a city ordinance that expressly bans rogue pothole-patching, but warned that it might be illegal and that poor repairs can also leave the person making the repair liable.

And the city's repairs, which uses blowtorches and heated asphalt, would surely last longer than amateur cold-patching.

Rivera said the city recognizes that the effort, and the attention it's garnered, comes from a place of frustration.

"We share that frustration," he said. "We'd like to repair more potholes more quickly, but our efforts have been thwarted by Mother Nature."

Rain has kept Portland's road crews from focusing on the potholes that have dotted city streets after a series of storms through much of February and March.

Nonetheless, Rivera said, road crews repaired about 450 potholes in the first days of a major pothole repair push, and they fixed 900 on Friday alone.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus