Houses With A View Along Sellwood Blvd

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There are a number of southeast-Portlanders who won enough in the lottery of life to afford addresses along SE Sellwood Boulevard. 

They undoubtedly have views I'd conceivably kill for. 

The combination of architecture and square-to-the-compass property orientation and location along a street trending diagonally give the impression of fishermen's houses along a street in a coastal town overlooking the ocean. 

A great deal that happens in Oregon is indirectly related to the ocean, so maybe it's not too far off the beam. 

They don't have a view of the sea, but they do have an awful nice view. 

More Oblique Art On Stark

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The A-Frame sign in front of Oblique Coffee is delightful enough it deserves its own entry. It totally echoes the decor ethic of the shop.

Constructed of doors and paint and creativity and hand work. In the place where the old hours were, it even sports a palimpsest. 

Oblique Art On Stark

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I do not know if anyone at Oblique Coffee was responsible for nailing this to the 'phone pole outside their shop, but it is an apt depiction of what some days feel like without the coffee.

We can call it The Decaffienated Scream. 

Just A Bit Of SE Stark Near 30th

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No agenda here, no message, no intended subtext.

Just an angle on SE Stark St from just east of SE 30th Avenue up to about 28th (that's where that little crest is). It's a particularly cozy corner of the universe with an atmosphere that Portland progress still hasn't completely covered over. 

There's a real antique of a building on the SE corner of 28th and Stark that used to be a old-school service station, back in the day when cars were new, you can tell it by the architecture. The Goodfoot lounge is still there; there's a pizza joint next to that and, in a small tin-sided building, an art gallery and a place that used to be the home of an ultra-left alt-media operation called The Portland Alliance, though I understand that has a Beaverton address now, which is ironic. 

Well, clearly I need to get some shots of that corner, if I'm going to rhapsodize so.

I'll never fall out of love with this town.

Oblique Coffee Co.

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There's a lovely small-batch coffee roaster at SE 30th Place and Stark Street, across the street from Laurelhurst Village care center, a place that, at one time, had been known as Mount St. Joseph. 

The place is called Oblique Coffee Roasters and it's in a extraordinarily charming rehabbed corner store at the corner of SE 30th Place and Stark Street. They've survived the pandemic in fine style and have great tasting coffee and lattes. The caffe Americano I had had a broad-chested flavor but was pleasantly smooth; bold without sharp edges and nuanced smoothness.

They have little cinnamon pull-apart muffins that were also quite tasty.

I've given but two glimpses here but they set the tone. The building and the business revels in its history. It's old-old Portland combined with old-Portland touches like antique Blitz-Weinhard beer cans and I also saw a book about Bill Walton there. The charm and the quality of the coffee there both sold me hard.

And the Brown-Eyed Girl has testified she'd not had a better au-lait from any other place for a while. 

Mulugeta Seraw

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In 1988, an Ethiopian immigrant was murdered in inner southeast Portland. 

But I get ahead of myself.

On a number of street blades on corners near SE 28th and Stark, and a little north and a little east of this, you will see this topping them:

A lot of people know about it, but a lot don't, and I see the questions about them, so I figured I'd leave this here to be found.

It's an unusual design. The gentleman's photo, the unfamiliar script, the lifespan meted in one set of numbers on one side and another set, with seven years' difference, on the other. I'll tell you a little about that, now. For the back story, one can check out this Wikipedia page on Mulugeta Seraw; if you don't go there, understand this much: on a night in 1988, on SE 31st Avenue between Stark and Burnside, three local white supremacist skinheads affiliated with the White Aryan Resistance and another group called East Side White Pride encountered the then-28-year-old man and, indicting him on being African and an immigrant, beat him to death with a baseball bat, because amongst white supremacists this amounts to a capital crime.

The top of display is a cameo depiction of Mulugeta Seraw, which should be an obvious point. His name is rendered in the Amharic language in the Ge'ez script which is the lingua franca of the Ethiopian nation and its graphic method of expression, respectively. The difference in the years comes from the fact that, in Ethiopia, they reckon years a little differently; there is a seven years' difference. Mr. Seraw was born in 1960 by our calendar but 1953 by the Ethiopian one.

So it's a memorial to Mulugeta Seraw in the area which he was murdered, an attempt to never forget what happened and also a way to remember why. These are battles which we still fight today and are still waging. Strangely, there are those amongst us who still insist that this is the proper way to treat other human beings, and so the reminders must persist.

An Old Motorcoach Decays In SE Portland

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Saw this old workhorse parked - more or less permanently it looks - on SE 78th Avenue near Taylor Street.

The plates were Florida. 

Just another Florida Man seeking shelter in the Pacific Northwest. 

A Slice Of SE Portland Gingerbread

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While we were near the Hawthorne Powell's Books on Labor Day, we saw this little confection:

The architectural style, says my wife, is 'gingerbread'. It's painted up like a delightful bit of candy. And that easel on the front? Stanning for Ukraine, of course.

We found this on SE 37th just north of Hawthorne Blvd, just beyond the Three Doors Down Cafe. 

The Johan Poulsen House at 130

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I've mentioned this house before but I've never had my own image of it. Thanks to last Wednesday, I've several. 

 

This is the Johan Poulsen House, built in 1891 by the namesake timber baron. In the year 2021, it's 130 years old. It could be Portland's most visible example of the Queen Anne style (BITD I called it Victorian, which I believe now is incorrect to say), and in as much as it's prominently positioned on McLoughlin just south of the east end of the Ross Island Bridge, it's downright impossible to ignore. 

Not that you'd want to ignore it; it's quite a lovely sight. Back in '16, it went up for sale and was acquired by a local media production company and why not, what a signature place for something like that, but they only held it form '17 to '19. It is apparently on the market again.

Back when it originally was for sale, I fantasized:

... a signature landmark with nearly 5,000 square feet of living space, and enough bedrooms that you can move your salon in. Which is exactly what I'd do. I'd take me, The Wife™, our felines, and a few friends who deserve to be admired and we'd all go there and be awesome together. Hell, I'd research the dimensions of the Algonquin Round Table, have a replica made, have it put in the room with the best view (it sits on the nose of a bluff overlooking the east end of the Ross Island Bridge and with nearly unobstructed exposure to downtown Portland and most of the inner east side, I mean, imagine the views!) and we'd just be brilliant together.

... and I'd still do it, I'll tell you. I'm awesome enough to carry it off, and I'd be adorable at it. 

Just need that money and fame (the right kind). I mean, I'm here available for it, and I'm absolutely certain I could handle the wealth and fame. 

In a world where some kid got famous for mumbling catch me outside, how about that? there ought to be room for me to be profitably brilliant. 

The Perfectly-Named Moving And Storage Company Doesn't Ex ...

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Well, it does now, I guess.

... spotted in the lot of a long-time moving outfit at SE 7th and Woodword. Would I recommend them? LFINO. Last time we moved across town, George W Bush was in office and we did it ourselves (mur-der, let me just tell you).

Would I recommend us? Hell to the no.

Help Wanted, Artist-Style

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Do you like painting? 

Do you like painting houses?

Aphrodite Painting might like to talk with you. This appeal I found stapled to the post outside of the mighty I've Been Framed, on Foster Road. The photo should be big enough for you, my interlocutor, to embiggen and read.

 

The author invites you to use your obsessive skills with paint and brush (if you have them) to help them ply their trade. And by appealing outside the most bohemian art supply store the world has ever seen, they should catch a few. 

I appreciate the creativity, anyway.

Now I Know The Apartment Developers on Division Are Just Messing With Us

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The picture doesn't yet exist that encapsulates just how nonsensical housing development in inner east-side Portland is ...

Oh, wait. I stand corrected.

Somehow, it stands to reason that an apartment silo (one of many up and down Division west of César Chávez) should be called Move the House Apartments, a name that has the same amount of sense as any Republican idea has these days.

Actually, that's kind of unfair on the apartment name, now that I think about it. 

At least it'll be easy to fill over with sakcrete when the time comes to rename it, as we know it must.

Women of Power Mural Activity At The Phoenix Pharmacy Building, July 15th 2020

3718We've visited this corner before. It got our attention today because of the new decor being installed.

The building, on the northwest corner of SE 67th Avenue and Foster Road, was built on 1922 by a pharmacist named John Leach to house his business. The Phoenix Pharmacy remained a going business at one corner or the other at 67th and Foster until the early 2000s, and the building itself, with its unique architecture, has ascended to hallowed landmark status.

Its latter-day history is a bit checkered and tarnished, as the vicissitudes of progress will provide. After the pharmacy vacated the building, a variety of businesses tenanted there, including a cheap phone and VHS video store which is what most people probably remember there, if they remember anything there at all.

In '99, according to the history published online by the preservationist group Foster The Phoenix, a neighborhood businessman purchased the property in hopes of rehabbing it into a stove museum and community center - plans which were destined to remain unrealized. So it remains standing, unoccupied, as Foster The Phoenix works diligently to forward their own plans.

The balks of plywood shielding the first-floor glass are by no means new nor a response to the protests that are ubiquitous in the news. They've been there for a long time, and up to recently, were decorated with an abstract party scene. Our route through the neighborhood was in via Holgate from Outer East Portlandia, then a side-jink via 67th in quest of some much-needed coffee at the Dutch Bros at 67th and Foster. My eye was caught by a young man covering up an ugly red graffito with a rather stylish street-art phoenix. And then it was east to see the new art. While the Brown Eyed Girl fixed us up with lattes, I jumped out and started clicking.

This is some timely art, a tetraptych (I was today years old when I found out that this is a word) of four women.

This first panel, still incomplete ... I'll cop to not recognizing her.

The second panel, also incomplete, but not recognize Frida Kahlo? How could you not do that?

The third panel, I see Angela Davis here.

I'm getting a heavy Marsha P. Johnson vibe on this last one, if only for the unfinished adornments.

This is a strong improvement over the artwork that graced these panels up until now. I hope to get back there after it's finished and get a look at how powerful this will be when complete.

A lot of spirit here!