Sunlight Downpour, Rockwood, 181st and SE Stark

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Just more shafts of sunlight I saw coming back home from work today. 

Rockwood, 181st and SE Stark. 

It's been like this the past couple of days, with the clouds and air the way it's been. 

The Auto Graveyard of Glisan St

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The address appears to be 9025 NE Glisan St. It seems to be something of a boneyard, though a very small one.

I'm not any sort of authority on cars this old. They look like they are from the 1940s, or maybe 1930s. They look like gangster cars. Al Capone would be riding in one of these sweet rides, when he was alive and they were new.

What the owner of the property does with them, or how they're acquired and why they stay here or so very long (these old cars come and go from this lot and have, according to my memory, for years, a decade and longer) is a complete mystery to me. 

That they have done so for so long, in constant state, is a delight just as quirky and mysterious.

Anyone wanting to pass by themselves? This is just west of the I-205 offramp to NE Glisan, on the north side of the street, at the top of the slope. The appropriately-named Top Of The Hill Tavern is across the street from there.

The Shabby Quick Shop At Stark Firs

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There's this throwback of a trailer court on the south side of SE Stark Street, just east of the entrance to Floyd Light Middle School* at approximately 108th Avenue. 

It's called Stark Firs, and the old structures and manufactured homes are vintage and arranged like dominoes, at fairly close quarters. It is prole as hell and I love it. I've lived temporarily in places like it and have known people who've grown up in such places. It has a piece of my heart.

No actual firs seem to be in it, but a great deal of asphalt.

There is a shabby quick-shop at the front of it. Here it is, as taken through the just-washed windshield of Olivia earlier today:

Save for rearranging of the fractal confetti of beer ads and various retail poster ads on the outside, it's looked more or less like this ever since we moved out this was some 15-more years ago. It's seen a lot of life, there's been a gun crime or two over the years, no more than you'd expect for a big town, but still it soldiers on, too stubborn to die.

And that is one reason I love it so. It's beautiful, not shi-shi enough for the region of Portland east of I-205, but perfectly at home out here, where the people are still quite real.

It is adorable. I love this.

Montavilla Sunday Morning

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Nothing much here, just Stark Street looking west from SE 80th taking advantage of the deserted Sunday morning streets and a scrunchy viewing angle to get a really cool picture of storefronts that could be in any town ... large or small, Portland or elsewhere.

Yes, we still have pandemic going on, new CDC guidance notwithstanding, but for being the big town it is, parts of Portland can be surprisingly deserted on any given Sunday morning because that, too, is how we are here.

The View From The Portland Tram, 2008

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Since I did the dive into my photographing past, I stumbled on this and it made me feel antic.

In 2008 me and the Brown Eyed Girl treated ourselves to a ride on the then-still-pretty-novel Portland Aerial Tram. These photos, also taken with that old ViviCam 3705, are a little shaky and blurry and indistinct in places. I punched them up with the GIMP as best I could. They show vistas looking northeast mostly, in the direction of the then-much-less-developed central Eastside. Still, the changes jump the hell out at you.

 

Back then, the old Lloyd Towers - 500 and 700 NE Multnomah - were the tallest buildings in that district. These days, they're getting kind of lost. And are hardly as alone.

I think actually this is a slightly better view of that.

And bridges, of course, always bridges with Portland. In the middle of the shot, the Oregon Convention Center, once the signature landmark in the area. Just to the left of that, what we call today the Moda Center, and we still, I think then, called the Rose Garden.

The above and below photos jog the George Orr in me. Ask me what I mean by that if you're curious, constant reader.

 

NE 82nd Avenue Today

3701It's just a couple of pictures of NE 82nd Avenue, between Burnside and Glisan, across the street from Vestal Elementary School. I do love pictures that center a notable thing, and sometimes, that notable thing ... is no-thing. It is what it, as they say in the aphorism that's becoming used to the point of being worn out, is.

This sort of picture I enjoy because taking shots of telephone poles at a close angle to the line is the sort of image that is as urban to be as anything. It has its own visual rhythm and rhyme.

I found the looking down 82nd toward Glisan from where I was standing very pleasant. I had a lull between traffic signals and could step out in the street for a brief instant. I wasn't trying to get deserted-pandemic street, it just kind of happened this way.

The Dog On the Sign: The 102nd Street Market

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At NE 102nd Avenue and Wygant Street, in the Parkrose area of town, there's a c-store ... a quick shop ... a bodega, what have you, a shabby but not unclean corner store called, inaccurately, the 102nd Street Market.

Numbered streets are avenues, you see, with few exceptions in Portland ... and none of them anywhere near here.

Anywhoozle, This charming little place looks a little loved-on by time, but is neat and clean and serves its neighborhood well. And, it has a store dog, and that store dog has a bit of a rep, see. You don't even have to go in to see the dog because ...

 ... the pup's on the sign.

The architecture informs you that this was an old-school Plaid Pantry back in the day.

4646 NE 102nd Avenue in Portland, in case the reader wondered.

Southeast Ash And Grand, 2017

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Just an inner-eastisde street scent, Southeast Grand at Ash, looking west. The big building is, of course, Big Pink; one block away, on the right there, a Salvation Army building; visible along the left side of the frame, that old architecture which gave East Portland (and this is part of the original city of East Portland, when there was such a thing) its charm and continues to inform it in a low, slow tone.

 

Also visible in the picture that you don't see so often now: parked cars and people.

Another Look Down SE Stark Into Downtown Montavilla, PDX

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I took another one of these pictures. I just like 'em, I guess. Looking east down Southeast Stark into the Montavilla business district from the gore point where Thorburn Street devolves into the Stark/Washington couplet east of Mount Tabor.

I just like 'em. Also, it leads into the next missive.

Which happens right after this one.

Washboard Clouds in the Outer East Portland Sky.

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Seen very recently, on  morning commute home from work. Location: Southbound offramp from I-205 to the Washington-Stark couplet:

A nearly-perfectly-regularly rippled sky, almost like a washboard.

The weather wasn't particularly turbulent, although it's been cool and quite cloudly lately.

 

[Out122ndWay] Goodbye, Tina's Corner: The Very Last Day Of A Very Good Diner

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I come to you today, my friends, in something of a state of mourning. I lovely place has been, and now, a lovely place is no more.

I'm speaking of a little family-run diner that I've spoken of before. Tina's Corner, at SE 122nd Avenue and Harold Street, has permanently closed.

Tina's Corner, the diner

It sits, a smallish blue building with five big picture windows in the north face, on a lot that seems rather large for it. Inside, despite the perspective the camera gives it, it's actually kinda small.

The bathrooms were nigh-microscopic.

Against those picture windows, six rather spacious booths. next to that, a counter with six stools. In the back, free-standing tables … a handful of two-tops that could be slid together and a couple of six-tops.

It was always busy, but never overwelmed. But this was different. We were there on the 21st of January and, after the 22nd of January, after eighteen years of making locals damnably happy, Tina's Corner was to close, permanently.

This was, for me, the very last day of a very good diner.

Foreground: Paying the bill.
Background: the archetypical diner kitchen. For real.

There was nothing fancy, haughty, or elite about it. It was come-as-you-are dining of the kind you used to find all over Portland. It was charming and quaint, decorated a little like your grandma's house. And it felt like it, too.

Festooning the walls were skilfully-done graphite-on-bristol portraits of people, taken from photographs. They always were delightful, and the artist was presumably available for hire.

Goodbye, on the edit. 

The windowsills along those picture windows held the most adorable batch of knickknacks, and there you were, back in your grandma's kitchen again. Little bears holding up skillets that said TODAY'S MENU on them. Those little bobbly things that ran on solar power. Happy little animals and kitchen things. 

On each table was a tray with an embarrassment of condiments: three kinds of hot sauce (Tapatio, green and red Tabasco), little jam and jelly packets, salt and pepper. The reason I thought Tina's Corner was a li'l ol' slice of heaven, was this:

The taco omelette that argued there is a God,
and God wants us to be happy.

There was a lot of regulars saying goodbye that night, and I was saying goodbye to this. The Tina's Corner taco omelette. This took me back to the days of Quality Pie on NW 23rd. And it amazes me that more breakfast places don't have it. Seasoned ground beef, cheese, a bit of salsa (this time, not), cheese. But just try finding one. Now, there's one less place. The taco omelette pictured above, of course, was superb. The hash browns were ideal, that moist, pillowy mass of fried and shredded potato that is so very satifying.

I did not go away from this hungry. I am melancholy; there will never, likely, be another one like it in my life (my waistline may thank me for that, but my soul will be a bit harder to satisfy).

The most interesting customers were a family behind us in the very last booth before the wall. At one of the six-tops, four Portland Police officers were taking a break and celebrating the one-last-meal at Tina's; the kids in the booth were big face of Portland's Finest, and the supervisor who brought up the rear greeted the kids though the window, and were rewarded with one of those Jr. Cop badge stickers the police give out.

What I liked the most, outside of the simple, sincere fare was the feeling of sitting there. You didn't feel like you were in outer Southeast Portland so much as you did you were at a roadside diner on some highway going into the mountains. It's right on the edge of town, right on the edge of forest. Just a little north of Foster Road, where the wilderness (or at least what passes as such, within the Portland city limits) take up. You feel way out on the edge but you aren't so far out, not really. But the view was unsurpassed.

It's said that the new property is going to be yet another in the interminable march of marijuana shops that seem to be springing up in more places that are absolutely necessary. No longer will area pot-smokers have to make the harrowing trek all the way to just north of Division on 122nd. I mean, it's probably all they could do to get there without getting dysentery.

But, Tina's Corner is gone, now, and we shall miss it.

Maybe it's time to get round to the Gateway Breakfast House. I mean, if it's good enough for Presiden Obama …

[Out122ndWay] Just A Few More Photos From Midland Library's 20th

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It's hard not to share every photo I took there. Here's just a few more of the best, though.

Cupcakes! These were seriously scrumptious.

Lovely little buttons for the collection.

The circulation clerks are like a rock band to me in this photo.

You want information? They got information. At that desk … and all the
shelves and computers beyond it.

Parents and kids, doing all the library things.
You can't not like that.

What was cool about the Aaron Nigel Smith band is what was cool about all
rock bands … the drummer was as unto himself, holding down the rhythm as
though he was taking his cues from a higher plane.

Midland staff: You want it (library-wise), they got it.

A luminous sunset over Midland Park caps the day.

I'm depending on at least 20 more years of awesome from this library. 

[Out122ndWay] The Midland Library Clock Tower At Night

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In the piece on the Midland Library's 20th, I mentioned the clock tower over the main entry and how nice it was, how it makes me feel just to look at it, and how it's the kind of landmark you can say you can meet someone under, say, Meier & Frank style (you'll get what I mean there if you've been a Portlander long enough).

The spouse and myself went by there to drop off some book returns and it was well after dark; I realized that, lit-up, it was quite pretty, and that I hadn't had a single picture of that. So, here:

Isn't it beautiful?

And a gently hilarious thing. Look just to the right of the word LIBRARY there and you'll notice a white light. That's the OPEN sign.

It's after 9 PM when this photo happened. Why should you taunt me so, library.

But … I love you, Midland Library. I could never stay mad at you. 

[liff] Our Hummingbird, Perching

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In heraldry, that is to say, the classic school of artistic design of coats of arms, there is a bird called the martlet. It is drawn usually something like this:

Those tufts on the bottom of the bird are where the feet would be, if they were there. Medieval people had funny ideas about fauna. The most likely, to me, legend as to whither the martlet comes from the conjecture that it was inspired by the swift … which probably perched, but few people actually saw it happen, so the popular idea was that they never landed at all.

Which was kind of what I thought about hummingbirds. We have a few hanging about; they're pleasant birds, fun to watch, and scrappy little guys who are not above chasing (and sometimes succeeding) some of the local crows away from the area. I mean, I knew that hummingbirds perched, but I'd never seen one … until this guy:

And that, my friends, is your Marlin Perkins moment for the day. 

[pdx] People of the Eastside: The Division-Midway Festival of Nations

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Sunday was the day of one of Portland's numerous other street fairs, this time, one quite close to home.

The Division Midway Alliance for Community Improvement … a business group centered along SE Division Street between SE 117th and SE 148th Avenues … is in our back yard. Hell, it's just as good as being our back yard. A few of our favorite merchants are within its demesne. And, each year, it celebrates the astoundingly awesome diversity that the David Douglas community has become with a little thing they call the Festival of Nations.

This year's 'do was held in the most welcoming and accessible spot yet … the western half of the parking lot of the Division Center shopping center, located at 122nd and Division. It happened from noon to 4:00 PM on Sunday, and it contained as much as it could in that small space of time. Nepalese and Karenni folk dancers (which we missed) and Grupo Latitudes (which we did not miss) provided the international flair; Latin and Somali food provided the spice. Here are some of the things we saw there …

An artist, masterful in the use of colored pencil:

Grupo Latitudes played music of the Andes.

We missed the Asian folk dancers performing … but we didn't miss seeing them in their gorgeous outfits, enjoying the food and the Andean music.

There were other crafts, too, such as the metalworker that was there, who had a most attentive student.

Some of the organization's volunteers, flush with the enthusiasm of a successful and interesting event:

We even imagine there were some "good guys" hanging around. Makes perfect sense to me.

The only real problem was that there wasn't enough of it, really. Four hours is a tough time to hold a really super street fair, and the location of it seems to hint at the challenges that our side of town has in creating community. Because of demographic shifts, the area around 122nd Avenue, the spine of the David Douglas school district and the increasingly vibrant David Douglas community.

It's a good place to be, but a place with its own challenges and obstacles that, perhaps, communities east of Mount Tabor don't share. When there are community positive organizations such as the Division-Midway Alliance and people-positive events such as the Festival of Nations that acknowledge the varied complexion of the community, though, how can one not love living out 122nd way? And how can one not have some sort of hope that a positive vision for the future of our neighborhood will prevail?

We had fun, and we hope it will get even better in the years to come. 

[liff] Hawthorne Blvd Sunset, August 2015

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The sunset on this latest of a string of too-fine days.

[pdx] East Burnside, Late Sunday Night

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Looking west, down East Burnside Street from 20th Avenue, late Sunday evening.
That is all.

[pdx] Photos On Sunday: The Burnside Bridgehead

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The block on the north side of the east end of the Burnside Bridge has something of a conflicted history. For a long time, nobody knew what its future would look like. Many people had some definite ideas, but in the end, none of them willed out, in a way that's funny in bike-friendly, liberal, weird Portland.

This block is bounded on the south by East Burnside Street, on the west by NE 3nd Avenue, on the north by NE Couch Street, and on the east by NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, once known as Union Avenue. I became a full-time Portlander in 1985 (with a break from '87-'91, but that's another story) but, by then, being a perhaps-too-avid watcher of the news, had familiarity with at least some of the issues surrounding that square block of Portland.

When I finally did come to the shining city, I knew there was a place of no small notoriety there, and that was sad, because they really did try to fix something. The building on the north side of the bridge was a place that looked disreputable but tried to have a good heart – they called it Baloney Joe's. It was a homeless shelter run by an organization that dissolved in a scandal involving the director, an organization called the Burnside Community Council, and that's sad because there were some good angels hard at work there, some of whom you might know if you hang around the good Portlandians online.

Sometime around 1990, due to the scandal, the BCC ended and Baloney Joe's operation was taken up by the Salvation Army, who renamed it the Recovery Inn, then developers got interested, and the Inn finally closed and moldered for several years while a variety of power and money centers vied for the opportunity to develop it.

Someone wanted to put a Home Depot store there. I, for one, still can't picture it.

Today, the battle has been settled. When whoever thought it was going to be a bonnie idea decided to turn Burnside and Couch into a one-way couplet east and west of the bridge, they needed a place to funnel the west-bound traffic on NE Couch onto the Burnside Bridge westbound. Instead of a Home Depot or lower-income housing or anything regarding the homeless, now, an S-shaped boulevard full of traffic runs through it.

In liberal, weird, transit-and-bike-friendly Portland.

Who says irony is dead? As long as this absurd city remains, thus shall it be. And the debate over what could have been shall 'ere be considered academic.

The skyline of the down, dirty, yet somehow fashionable
CEID looking south from the Burnside Bridge.

The Burnside Bridgehead exists in what was, and still shows many sides of, what we locals called the C.E.I.D – the Central Eastside Industrial District. It's starting to give way to converted loft work/live spaces, trendoid bars, and retail … which, one supposes, was just a matter of time, given that it was in sight of the city core.

The part of the block not given over to the Couch Street connection is carpeted over in long grass and wildflowers. The part of Couch that used to connect SE 3rd Avenue to MLK is now a very short stub which provides convenient and ready parking on a Sunday afternoon to the tyro photographer and his wife, and an opportunity to stretch the legs and look at the urban views.

We all strive for more than just the basics. This is not
Portland, this is universal.

The building on the south side of the bridge at 3rd Avenue has had a sign on it for decades: R.J. Templeton Co. Whatever R.J. Templeton Co, did, it's been gone perhaps even before your humble interlocutor came to town; one remembers the facade mostly bland painted wood where windows must once have been. The windows are back and whatever is going in behind them, you can bet it's going to be pretty spiffy and, no doubt, priced to match.

The area is popular now for skateboarders and bike riders, who have carved their own paths to and from Burnside down to the lower streets. Down closer to the river, along 2nd Avenue, is some of the last 'industrial' businesses in the area; some of Portland's oldest produce merchants are still there, a remnant of what was once so many that they named the area Produce Row. Set deep within the industrial haven, it took advantage of the quick freeway connections and rail access to be a break-in-bulk point for the fruits and veggies coming into and out of Portland.

The era is closing out so very slowly though. We do things in our own time here in Portland, and this is on a timetable of its own. Farther down 2nd, under the Burnside Bridge itself, is a skatepark that went from outlaw to legitimate. We saw murals (which I'll go back and get sometime) and people getting ready, complete with cameras for posterity's sake. We indeed have come so far.

The path from E Burnside down to NE 3rd Avenue.
You can go your own way, baby.
The building in the distance is the Eastside Exchange,
the building addressed with the No.123
rubric seen earlier in this post.

They say that weeds are wildflowers out of place.
Like the homeless people that used to shelter here, they'll
be evicted in their turn, perhaps. 

Looking under the bridge at SE 3rd Avenue from NE 3rd Avenue.

Today, the old gives way to the new, a streetcar runs where once traffic did, and it all looks kind of the same, but something more than the obvious seems to have moved on. But this is Oregon, and that means …

… we'll always have the blackberry bushes.

ON EDIT: Fellow PDX Facebooker and curator of the Dead Memories Portland group, Michael Long, shares the news that they are going to put something in more than just a road there … and the idea is so very, very us. It's a real dumbbell …