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. 

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. 

Dutch Bros. Is Not Unlike The Force

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Well, at least in the Pacific Northwest, it is. Remember, we're all in this together ... with good coffee.

Another bit of coincidental wisdom. The Matrix is being kind today.

Playing With The Panic Sign At SW 11th and Burnside

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I think I've written about the Panic Sign ... the logo of the software developer Panic here in Portland, at the top corner of the building at the southwest corner of SW 11th Avenue and W Burnside St here in Portland ... before, but since I got a nifty little low-price, high-capability tablet computer for Christmas, which I'm enjoying with great gusto, I've made playing with the Panic Sign a bit more of a sacrament during weekly Book Church.

It's visible from the Coffee Room in Powell's Burnside, which has big windows opening onto the NE corner of the intersection. All you have to do is load the URL http://sign.panic.com, choose one color from the top row to fill the top/left side of the logo, one color from the bottom row to fill the bottom/right side, and touch the Change The Sign! button below to commit the change. When you do it from a table in the Coffee Room, you can see the change as close to instantly as makes no difference.

The colors in the interface are actually a little less vivid than those out on the sign, but you get the idea near enough.

The text on the page saith thus:

Founded in Portland in 1997, it took Panic 15 years to get a sign. We want it to be Portland’s sign, too. Come down to SW 11th & Burnside at night, and go on, change our colors!

It really is just that simple. We can relate. We too love Portland enough that we want to leave our mark on it in some way, in a good way (despite how problematical that seems to be becoming, Hail Eris). And since I have so much fun doing it, we are hereby declaring it an official sacrament of #BookChurchPDX. And anyone anywhere can do it, you just have to be down at SW 11th and West Burnside to see he (I'd suggest a webcam for this, Panic, how about it? As for us, Here we sit and load our page; we can do no other.

[pdx] Scenes From A Pearl: A Woman On NW Couch St

3351.

There is a small covered plaza open to the public on NW Couch Street, south side, between NW 11th and 12th Avenues. It's in the middle of the block, across the street from the main lobby entry to a building called M Financial Plaza, and is properly part of the Brewery Blocks, in the crook of a building called the Brew House Tower.

Blitz Weinhard used to actually produce actual Northwest beer here. I'm both amused and dismayed at myself that Even though I've been hanging around this area of town, off and on, for the last couple of decades … innumerable trips to Powell's Books … the change has been so gradual that even my memory of what it used to be has begun to undergo major slippage.

But this day, which was a day back in June, we sat, The Wife™ and I, sharing a coffee and splitting a 3-pack of some really quite-scrumptious madeleines that we got at the Peet's Coffee there on Couch, next to the Sur le Table. They're very nice at the Peet's, and frequently accomodate us even though we typically roll in there about 15 minutes, give or take, before closing time.

This is our 'Madeleine moment', which we originally did on a lark because we wanted a coffee and we went in there and there they were and I had just commenced reading La recerches du temps perdu. Latterly it seems my spouse is starting to enjoy it more than me. I'll not complain, here. The madeleines are immaculate. And, the Peet's closes at 7 PM on a Sunday, so having this spot to relax and enjoy them is essential.

I noted the woman as we walked into the covered plaza area. She was not easy to miss; attractive young woman, dressed for the weather in a cropped top, short skirt, and attractive legs clad in patterned tights. As I recall, she wore sunglasses with big lenses. Very distractedly urban.

After we sat at a table many feet back of her the scene took on a different aspect. There was something of  alienation there. She seemed very within herself, as she sat on the arm of a chair and desultorily drank from three green bottles of sparking water that she had there. She was quiet, never saying a thing; she was in the world, but it was as though she and the world weren't on speaking terms just at that moment.

Eventually, but not too long after this, she packed up and moved out.

In the center of the block, visible from the little plaza where we drank our coffee and masticated our madeleines, there is a chiminey stack from the old brewery. While parts of the old buildings remain on this block, the vast majority of the buildings there are of new and recent construction and went up when the area was developed in the last decade.

I couldn't help but wonder how many new Portlanders go by that area and think that these buildings must have looked different when they were a brewery. Most of the buildings never were, of course, but I can't help also but think that most people are either too new ot Portland or too disinterested to think that these buildings could ever have been anything but.

[pdx_art] The Spritely Bean Comics Cafe … A Grand Opening Six Months in the Making

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It is true of some places that, even though they have a certain inception date, they can't help but start sharing the awesome before they're actually open

Such is The Spritely Bean.

The Spritely Bean (http://www.spritelybean.com) is a little comic cafe and a brand new thing at 5829 SE Powell Blvd, in an area of Southeast Portland that is, quizzically, nearly devoid of decent coffee places or bookstores of any kind. So a need is being answered here, and answered with a really delightful, very Portland approach.

Coffee, zines, and comics. We see nothing the matter with this.

You step inside and the place is comfortable, appropriately lit, inviting. It's got graphic novels, zines, and comics in the back, and a wonderful place you can spread out and enjoy quality time in the neighborhood all around. It's the sort of place you can spread out in and enjoy your coffee, your comics … or a really nifty selection of cheap eats and delightfully unexpected finds like Vietnamese iced coffee.

Adam (pictured left) and Huynh are two of the most affable and warm people we've met in a while. They run the place and are its friendly heart and soul. How affable? I'd met Adam once … just once, mind you … and when we crossed paths in the dealer floor at Linework NW a couple of months back he recognized me instantly and greeted me as an old friend.

You can't fake friendliness like that. Free hot dogs too!

This last Sunday was the official Grand Opening. Spritely Bean has been open for about four or six months now, but they had to make it official some time, and now it is. I was happy to see the people coming through on mostly a constant basis … it's a destination place, obviously (we happily ran into Bwana Spoons, who happened by and spoke with the proprietors for a while, and left with the most delectable looking frappé), but also a neighborhood place in a neighborhood that needs a place like this. The patronage was steady, which is always a good sign.

We looked at what they had to offer and what they have coming up, and this is really a place more people should work into their regular haunts. There are figure drawing sessions that have been held and will be held; you'll see a rich and exciting selection of zines (see the picture right); I discovered Modest Medusa there (a couple of books are still on offer). There is very much the indie and the local spirit there, everything that Portland's supposed to be famous for, artistically, is all here in microcosm.

It's not in our neighborhood but it's not too far out of the way, and it's something that that particular neighborhood has needed for a very long time. I'm happy to see it there, the neighbors are happy to see it there, and I'm hoping it has a long happy life in that area.

I'm not one for foreshadowing and omens,but finding a 2B drawing pencil in the middle
of an open table is significant somehow.

We're going to go by there on a regular basis, and I suggest everyone does.

[logo_design] Logo Goodness: Tap Project, Seven Virtues Coffee

1496. A couple of cool logos lately have caught my eye, and I couldn't help but share.

A co-worker in The Salt Mines brought in a beguiling paper coffee cup. It's nothing that wouldn't look out of place anywhere in Portland; but I'd never seen the logo before. It was playful and clean, modern and intriguing; a place I'd not heard of before called Seven Virtues. I found out about it from a blog I just stumbled on called Portland Coffeehouse Journal, a blog which is such a damned neat idea that I'm adding it to the blogroll anyway.

Anyway! The logo was very playful and energetic but the energy was contained constructively. The swirls around the outside make for a sort of "pinball" effect that returns the eye to the highly neat abstract representation of the lotus flower in the middle. Using Futura (that type looks like Futura, anyway) adds a clean modern dash to the whole thing. This is a great logo, and I enjoy it muchly.

We'll try to visit it soon, and get a better read on the place. They have a website here; just hours and location. Looks funky and cool, for what that's worth.

What trying to find out about Seven Virtues got me, though, was here: The website for the Tap Project:

I could say this is a cool logo, but that would be redundant. Blue, the color of fresh water and simple but effective graphics add up to create an accessible presence that communicates almost without words (though the words that are chosen are chosen rather well. The whole approach speaks volumes about appropriate use of color, type and semiotic communications.

If this doesn't win an award somewhere, I'd be shocked.

Tags: logo design, PDX logos, PDX Coffee, tap project, Logo Design We Like

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[pdx, ZehnPhoteaux] Schmap!

1082. As I'd hoped, my photo of Jim & Patty's Coffee that was short-listed for the Portland Schmap! Guide was, in fact, used! Yay me!

The entry it illustrates is kind of...well...wrong. Notably. The text, credited to wcities, in a copyrighted entry I can't locate there, describes Coffee People, and gives the location as NW 23rd Ave. In fairness, it does make note that the chain was about 30 strong, but it's written in present-tense and, as any Portlander who knows their coffee knows, Stumptown's heart was broken a few years back when Diederich Coffee first bowdlerized then sold Coffee People to (shudder) Starbucks, largely wiping CP from the face of the planet.

I've sent feedback to Schmap!, let's see where that goes.

H/T also to Cary at Left Coast Ramblings, who had two of his photeaux used in Schmap!. Nifty!

Tags: Jim and Patty Roberts, Coffee People, Jim and Patty's Coffee, Schmap, Portland, pdx