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.