Something Went Down at 138th And Division Wednesday Evening ...

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... but whatever it was it involved the westbound #2-Division TriMet bus and required six cop cars to quell.

The photo was taken from the corner of 136th and Division, outside of the magnificent Cruisers Cafe. 

It was peaceful, whatever it was. Soon after this, the group dissipated with no shots fired or mayhem of any kind. No FlashAlert, so we still don't know what happened here, but it ended peacefully, so we hope for the best.

Transit drivers have had it particularly hard and stressful during the Pandemic Year, so we hold faith for them.

7 NE Oregon St, Part 3: Transfixed by the abstract

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The other part of 7 NE Oregon I wanted to share today: this visually delectable, entrancing abstract pattern.

Since it only went up in 2019, I understand why it doesn't have the memory-share I thought it should. Also, note the "@LEVELHEADEDPRESS" credit there. 

I don't know if the individual strokes have any meaning as such, but the way they're layered and shaded they capture the eye and draw one in. Such delicate attention to detail is the province of someone truly talented, and I enjoy it muchly, from the almost fractal quality of the patter to the way the deft shading makes it all almost three-dimensional. 

It's a beautiful thing, to be sure. 

7 NE Oregon St, Part 2: The Resistance is Female

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Today I'm revisiting 7 NE Oregon St. I have a few closeups because street art like that is too good not to get close to.

Before I continue, I'd like to mention the credit, which is on the building, is Levelheaded Press. This may be them on the web, but I'm not certain. If it's wrong, I'll come back and change it.

There's more than one story told on the TriMet service building at Interstate and Oregon. This is a potent one:

I had to take this through the fence as I didn't feel confident to walk up to the building facade; it's not exactly public space, after all. 

The resistance is female, though, and after the past few years, I'm here for it.

7 NE Oregon Street, Portland, Oregon

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Back to the present day, then.

There is a building on the corner of NE Oregon St and Interstate Avenue, in the shadow of I-5 and the Convention Center, and it is covered in wonder.

It is merely, in function, a TriMet facility where trucks are parked and mechanical stuff no doubt happens. 

There is much to see on this building and I'll share some closeups in episodes to come. but, for now, the idea of a blue rose with the legend spelt out in thorns PORTLAND OREGON THE CITY OF ROSES is a pretty keen thing to assay, I think. 

Next Stop: Rose Quarter Transit Center

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Everything deserves a beauty shot, and here's another one of the MAX Blue Line, taken as though I was documenting it for TriMet (allow me a fantasy here). It's leaving the Steel Bridge from the east end and about to pull in to the Rose Quarter Transit Center bound for Gresham ... and no other points east.

At a time when there was only one MAX line, and it was just called the MAX, no color-coded lines or any of this gallimaufy we call transit in Portland these days, The Oregonian's Jonathan Nicholas (the latter-day Doug Baker and our fin de siècle version of Herb Caen) noted that a correspondent, noting that it didn't quite and was never going to route any farther east than Cleveland Avenue in Gresham, mentioned it would therefore never be the Boring Train ...

... but one could think of it as the Almost Orient Express. Which I do.

Bus Stop

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The access point to homeward-boundedness, during the interregnum.

I got to knew TriMet very well during the time without a VW, and this will stay in my mind as a fond memory.

When Your Transit System Pins You

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During the past several months I've been Olivia-less, I've been using TriMet to get to and fro in my workaday travels. I do like to collect the pins for the lapels (I'm becoming one of that sort of olding) and one of the bus drivers asked if I'd like a pin and, of course, being the anthropomorphic corvid that I am, said yes.

A couple of weeks later, she bestowed upon me this fancy:

The logo for TriMet's new 24-hour SErvice lines, the closest thing the agency's had to an 'Owl' route since 1986. There are three lines that run into the after-hours zone: 57-Forest Grove/TV Hwy, 20-Burnside/Stark, and 272-PDX Night Bus. Strictly speaking, the 272 isn't a 24-hour run; it has three or four round trips connecting to the 20 near 82nd and Burnside in the Montavilla nabe and letting you get to the 'port during the hours when MAX isn't running.

It's scant but important, I'm hoping it's the beginning of a trend, but if you need to get to the airport and you live on a straight line between Forest Grove and Gresham then, buddy, your never more than 60 minutes away from a TriMet ride.

24 hours a day.

And I have a memento.

Darkness Over Parkrose/Sumner TC

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Also in the last couple of days there was some dramatic cloud cover serving as a very dramatic backdrop to the Parkrose/Sumner Transit Center.

 It made the old-fashioned neon at the Jim Dandy burger dive, a fixture in this area since the 1940s, stand out with the warm-hearted nostalgia that is built into such a thing.

 Though there are four pullouts on the south side of the transit center drive, only one is a bus stop ... this one. The 71-60th Avenue and 73-122nd Avenue are the west and east halves, respectively, of what was once a single route: the 71-60th/122nd. You now have to transfer to use the whole route, though if you're travelling the whole thing, you're doing this big inverted U across Portland's east side, which is not something a commuter's likely to do.

The two routs alternate stopping here, while the others that serve the route layover in the three pullouts behind it. It's a frequent service line, which means that you aren't late for one (unless that was the one you needed), just early for the next.

The Magic TriMet Anniversary Bus

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This year, 2019-2020, is the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, or, as we've called it, TriMet; Portland's very own, trendsetting, multi-modal wonder.

TriMet has tied the three counties of the Portland Metro together since about 1969, when it was formed from the remains of, amongst other things, a private transit company called Rose City Transit. Back then it as just buses; these days, it's everything except planes.

Back in those days, the buses were pretty plain. You, can, if you're lucky, get a look at what it was like, because one of the buses is wrapped in the livery of those days: a utilitarian orange, white, and silver, with the original logo design on.

I spotted the anniversary bus one morning recently at the Parkrose Sumner TC, running on line 71-60th Avenue:

The paint job looks pretty solid, and the trick of the windows is like those graphic screens that restaurants like Denny's use to put an ad on the window and still allow you to see out. It's really obvious when it runs past you and the interior lights are on when it's dark out.

As memories go, also ... it's a pretty pleasant one.

[pdx] TriMet's Graphic Design Throwback T-Shirts

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This in over the transom:


It will be recalled that, from the mid-70s,
for about three decades, TriMet made navigating its innumerable routes a bit easier by slicing the Portland area into seven color-and-symbol-coded service sectors: Red Fish (NW and N), Purple Raindrop (NE), Blue Snowflake (NE and E), Brown Beaver (E and SE), Green Leaf (SE and SW), Yellow Rose (SW) and Red Deer (NW and SW). The Brown Beaver can be seen below and to the left in larger size; the simple design of the icons meant that if you going to a certain part of town, all you had to do was find the right color/symbol to guide you to the right handful of routes. I loved this system. It had a flair and a certain Portlandesque panache that was hard to put into words.

Well, times change and so did TriMet; by the middle of the aughts, the system was beginning to evolve away from the hub-and-spoke rationale which made pie-sliced sectors a natural thing, and the multiplicity of rail lines moving through the Portland Transit Mall called for a re-think and a different approach, which works a bit better today if it's a rather characterless.

For those of you (such as me) who fondly remember the old system and don't agree that it was dated, there is a way to fondly remember to others: Throwback gear from TriMet. The seven classic sector symbols are available on t-shirts (such as the one pictured at right) and caps: shirts run in the $16.99 range an the caps run a bit less.

The address for the shirts is http://www.cafepress.com/trimet/10216648, then just select a symbol, shirt or cap, and proceed to check out.

The TriMet gear front page, which includes more than just throwback shirts, is at http://www.cafepress.com/trimet.

[PDX] TriMet MAX: KATU Says It Runs On Magic

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While we have always held that Portland is built over the site of an ancient unicorn burial ground, I had no idea how deeply that went.

Here, today, KATU-Channel 2 has put up an article (that might be edited by the time you look at it, but it's here) about delays caused by upcoming maintenance. Here's a screenshot:

Not the best time for service delays, what with the hothothot weather and all. But what's that there? Second 'graf …

There you have it. They're using witches to power MAX. It's right there, and you couldn't put it on the web if it t'warnt true. And here I thought public transit was ran by muggles all this time. Live and learn, I suppose.

But what kind of witch improvements? I'm thinking better and more powerful spells to provide more trains and more on-time service. Though, if I were improving my witches, I'd not necessarily ask TriMet for that sort of advice on it. They'd probably just figure out some way to lay them off, budgets being what they are, and you don't want to lay off witches without a very good reason.

I'd ask a unicorn … if they were still around.

Sorry to be a downer here … but it is what it is. Or they are what they were, more appropriately.

UPDATE, 2208 Monday: Amusingly enough, KATU has not edited the article. Go fig.