The North End of Waterfront Park

4160Tom McCall Waterfront Park stretches along the left bank of the Willamette in the center of Portland for over a mile. It not only is Portland's most direct connection to the River but also represents history; Harbor Drive, the downtown freeway, once ran through this slender strip, also one of Portland's most remarkable buildings of the past, the Public Market Building ... later the headquarters of the Oregon Journal, where columnist Doug Baker planted the seed of imagination that grew into the mighty mite that is Mill Ends Park.

A small tab of Waterfront Park extends north of the Burnside Bridge, only as far as Everett Street.

Here Naito Parkway curves through the middle of the view and then ducks out of view to lead to the apartment district of inner NW Portland, and a ramp curves up and to the right to connect to the ancient Steel Bridge. 

In the foreground can be seen some of the Japanese American Historical Plaza. While this area is known for being Portland's Chinatown, before it was Chinatown, it was Japantown, and this was its southeast corner. A sculpture, out of shot at this POV, tells that story.

Again, A Portland Hellscape: NW 1st Avenue Between Burnside and Couch

4157Certain people trying to get a rise out of you will insist that Portland is not only burning, but in ashes now. 

It gets them fans.

On Saturday night, this is what NW 1st Avenue looked like between Burnside and Couch:

Old Town is a destination, but it's been so commodified that if you're there anytime after business hours, it's so deserted in places, it's just a liminal space now. 

Well, to be fair, the MAX stop there under the Burnside Bridge did kind of smell of pee. And there were homeless men lining up for admission to the Portland Rescue Mission, but homelessness is a thing that exists here in Portland. And the Rescue Mission has been there for decades. 

Of course, anyone willing to take the mental effort can imaging burning cars and derelict people out of Escape From New York, if you wanna. I can't stop you. And if you look far enough, you'll see a junky tent on a streetcorner. Portland's a Big Town, and those things happen here ... Portland doesn't strictly reserve the rights to that.

But anyone who thinks that Portland is a hell hole consumes too much right-wing media, and needs to get a damned grip. 

An Icon in A City That's Made Of Icons

4155It's the sign on the White Stag Block. We all know about this one.

Began life as the sign for White Stag Sportswear; became Made in Oregon for a while, and then the University of Oregon wanted to place their name up there.

That didn't go over well. The Ducks are popular here, but not that popular.

At that point the Portland City Council stepped in, led by Randy Leonard, buying the sign and making it an official symbol of the city. It's said Portland Oregon ever since. 

The tradition of the red-nose on the leaping stag has maintained. Ploosa shaunge.

Saturday Market Buskers, May, 2010

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Performing in front of the Skidmore Fountain where SW 1st Avenue and Ankeny Street come together.

A May afternoon in the year 2010. 

I can't remember what music they were playing, but judging by the instruments involved, that combo needed some authentic courage.

First and Ankeny exist on a boundary of the old original town of Portland on the south and the Couch tract on the north; streets change direction at that point from aligning with the river, which trends NNE-SSW, to roughly aligning with the North Star. And it kind of shows; Ankeny is an incredibly skinny street, and First jogs its way through. The result is a delightfully oddly shaped space where the streets almost, but not quite, align. Were it now for the MAX tracks running through it would be a most lovely public square.

We have a block in town we locals nicknamed "Pioneer Square", but it's full name is Pioneer Courthouse Square, named for the building that overlooks it from the east, and despite a similar rubric, it has no spiritual congruence with Seattle's Pioneer Square.

There is a place in Portland that feels like Seattle's Pioneer Square, though ... it's the Skidmore Fountain.

Northwest Portland, 2021

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Just a picture of the skyline of (mostly, now) residential inner NW Portland taken from the east end of the Steel Bridge. 

Yeah, this is one of those it's a whole new world now maunderings. 

About the only things that remain recognizable from before the year 2000 are the brick red apts down in front there, which date from the 1980s, and the iconic Union Station clock tower with its legendary GO BY TRAIN sign on the right. Thi high rise on the left, the shorter gabled roofs of the apartment silos to the right of that, indeed, all the lower roofs that seem to now cluster around Union Station's tower were, up through most of the 1990s, a rail yard that seemed ... well, eternal. 

The massive development in that area didn't seem so galloping when it was happening. I worked in that area, and it was most gradual. 

Those rearview mirrors really do make things look closer than they appear, don't they?

Trains And Buses, Old Town Portland

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The area at the north end of NW 4th Avenue, in the Old Town district, along Hoyt Street and beside the now-former Greyhound Station, is where a lot of transit comes together.

There's a parking lot and staging area for TriMet - this is the north end of our Transit Mall, the north-south axis at the center of the regional transit system which extends, in its current configuration, over a mile through downtown. There's a small building there where the drivers can take their breaks on layovers and just beyond that, if ever there was an icon for a town, there it is ... Union Station.

There's been altogether too many changes in Portland, but that still seems to be the same. It's a gorgeous and lovely building.

The Greyhound station has gone through a change; it suddenly isn't one anymore. Apparently Greyhound has decided it can do without, and ticketing is a few blocks away and the actual stop is just the curbside on a small newer street tucked under the Broadway ramp onto the Steel Bridge called NW Station Way. Sic transit gloria transit. 

The tableau, with its nowhere-somewhere-anywhere feeling, does charm me muchly, however.

[pdx_liff] Old Town Portland Sightlines

3312.

Devoted here to my love of looking as far as I can down a street and getting lost in the view.

This one, a look west down NW Glisan Street, from NW 6th Avenue:

And this one, looking south on NW 5th Avenue from NW Glisan Street:

Stage your favorite Leverage scene, fans. Remember, in Seasons 1-4, this was actually Boston, but we all knew it was really New Boston … Portland, I mean. 

[pdx_art] Art Nouveau M.S. Awareness Mural, NW 6th Avenue, Old Town

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Also seen in Old Town last week during our sojourn there, this mural in an awesome dead-on Art Nouveau style:

This is the first and only time I've ever seen Multiple Sclerosis awareness displayed so gorgeously, and with such style. An artist rubricked Lydia Emily painted it in 2015, and I pay all due respect. It's most lovely.

If you're in Portland, you can see it on NW 6th Avenue at Flanders Street. overlooking the small parking lot on the NE corner.

If you're not in Portland, just look at the photograph.