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

3873

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.

A View Of The Rose Quarter

3872

I've been going on at length about the area around the Steel Bridge, looking toward downtown PDX, the Convention Center, and the river, but not to much the other direction. Here's what's the other direction; we call it the Rose Quarter, in a view that shows what general direction the MAX line goes as it comes into the Rose Quarter Transit Center there.

This is where Portland's major league sports action (that isn't soccer) happens. For the legendary Portland Trail Blazers, who won their only NBA championship in 1977, this is the center of the universe.

Decades ago, this was a commercial district and neighborhood that formed the nucleus of the old city of Albina (absorbed into the consolidated City of Portland in 1891 when Portland, East Portland and Albina merged to form the beginnings of the modern City). In the 1960s, blocks of houses and businesses, largely of Black people, were cleared off to build the edifice on the left, Memorial Coliseum (today known as Veterans Memorial Coliseum, but typically referred to by locals as just The Coliseum when we speak of it at all). Eventually it was deemed necessary, in the way sports franchises deem it so, that a modern arena grace the area; a sea of money flowed into the area and from it arose, by 1995, what we then called the Rose Garden Arena. Eventually it succumbed to the regrettable trend of selling corporate naming rights, thus, in 2013 it became Moda Center, after an health insurance provider that itself was once known as ODS. 

The naming rights expire in 2023. I kind of hope they just let it go. The name Rose Garden is in the tradition of arenas like Boston Garden and Madison Square Garden and I insist that a great traditional reputation was jettisoned in favor of something lesser.

It will, however, be approaching 30 years old in 2023 ... and we all know how much sports franchises hate old clothes. Who knows what'll happen?

A Scene From The Elephant's Graveyard, 146th and SE Stark

3871

By elephants, of course, I mean trucks. 

There is a boneyard of sorts behind a large yellow building just west of the Franz Bread Thrift Store at SE 146th and Stark. It wasn't always that way; better part of a decade ago, that building was a Hotel/Motel furniture clearance store, and the lot on the left and behind of it were just blacktop.

That store has been closed a long time, and the lot behind and to its right now collects orphaned and wrecked trucks. It's not chaotic; they're stored back there neatly, with some care. Presumably it's a way station enroute to whatever alphabet heaven these spent pachyderms-of-the-road are bound. 

But a truck graveyard it indeed seems to be. 

A month ago we stopped by for our supply of baked, sliced, and wrapped carbohydrates and I spotted this retiree eking out its twilight days. The name caught my eye especially. Peter Corvallis Productions is a event planning and production service that's been powering trade shows, weddings, and just about anything you'll find on a fairground around Portland since 1959. There really was a man named Peter Corvallis, which I enjoy because twice in my life I've lived in a city called Corvallis and it makes a last name which scans, I think, rather pleasantly. A visit to the PCP website tells us what Mr. Corvallis passed away, however, in 2016, and also however, the company soldiers on, helmed by his daughters Maria, Athena, and Demetria.

I don't know from their service, but the Corvallis family has some of the coolest names I think I've ever heard. 

For the sake of curiosity: Here's Peter Corvallis Productions.

Northwest Portland, 2021

3870

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?

This Way To The Willamette Greenway

3869

This rather mundane-looking sign shines a light on several things, all of them very Oregonian indeed, some of them revealing our state's character, who we think we are, who we want to be, and how far we have to go to get there.

On the south side of Lloyd Blvd as it curves north to go under I-5 and meet up with Oregon Street by the Steel Bridge is this marker sign:

The things on this sign compel me to issue a prolix explanation, since these are very Oregon, very Portland things. And I like to do this, so here goes, as close to thumbnail as I can get.

The logo at the top says Willamette Greenway. This is a Very Oregon Thing, as it speaks to what's becoming a multi-generational ambition for a real connection to one of Oregon's defining things. 

Due to an evolution begun in 1913 under Governor Oswald West, when Oregon's beaches were declared a public highway assuring access to all, and culminating in the late 1960s with Governor Tom McCall's Beach Bill making in a permanent part of Oregon's political and social culture. Oregon's beaches are free for all, and open to all. Private parties reserving Pacific beaches to themselves are not The Oregon Way.

About the same people in a position to think about things like this wondered the same thing about another great thing that defined Oregon, the Willamette River. Most of the population of Oregon live in its famous valley, and it's vital to Oregon's business, Oregon's agriculture, and Oregon's famed way of life. Was there a sort of Beach Bill approach that could work to protect the Willamette as well as preserve it for all who depend on and enjoy it?

Out of that thinking came the idea for the Willamette Greenway, which, today, is both a goal to work for (Statewide Land Use Planning Goal 15, to be precise) and a way of approaching public policy about it. As understood by myself, the concept is that of a green space with as much public access as possible down both sides of the Willamette from source to mouth while at the same time preserving and protecting the ecological contexts of the river. 

The picture of public and private ownership of the river and its shores, presumably, is quite different from that of the Oregon Coast in 1913, so we don't have one big public access strip down both sides of the Willamette. What we do seem to have, though, is a river with scenic, almost wild shores and construction set back from it in rural areas, fairly generous access points, and, in city-center Portland, Tom McCall Waterfront Park and the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade as premiere examples of where it can take us.

The floating walkway and
"Duck's Dock" from near the
Steel Bridge.

The Eastbank Esplanade is Willamette Greenway thinking made real. As pictured in previous episodes, it's a pedestrian access over the riverside railways and accessible ways to get to a wide, paved walkway where joggers and pedestrians can enjoy being up-close and personal with the Willamette; as pictured here, it's a floating walkway (With the boat dock named for late Trail Blazer Kevin Duckworth) in the shadow of the I-5 super-slab connecting that esplanade walkway near the Steel Bridge to the main part of the Esplanade between the Burnside and Hawthorne Bridges. It's open to all, accessible whether or not you're ambulatory, relatively easy to get to, and convivially designed, despite having the West Coast main road at your back. 

It, too, speaks of not what we have but what we hope to have. For a city with a reputation for loving its green spaces to a fault, the presence of this freeway right on the east bank is a heavily dissonant note. Any number of plans over the years have been floated for the removal of what we call the East Bank Freeway and the rerouting of its traffic elsewhere, and here is evident another thing I mentioned: the distance between how we see ourselves and how we want to be here in Oregon. That as well is a thing made real here.

We may yet reach that point where the Oregon we have matches our noblest public aspirations. After all, it took more than fifty years between Governor West and Governor McCall to make untrammeled public access to Oregon's beaches a permanent part of the Oregon edifice. 

Anything's possible if you keep at it long enough.

7 NE Oregon Street, Portland, Oregon

3868

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. 

Wildfire Throwback: Wy'east From Washington SR 14

3867

Here's another one from the same trip I mentioned in the previous episode. This is eastbound on Washington's SR 14, just about at Exit 8.

As impressive as Wy'east is from Portland, SR 14 in Vancouver offers some juxtapositions of trees, highway, and mountain that accentuate the size of the peak.

The nimbus across the top of the picture is the incoming wildfire umbra. 

Wildfire Throwback: Vancouver's Stardust Diner

3866

Stumbled on a few from last year that I re-fell in love with so they deserved to be shared.

What you see here is the sign to a lovely place with food that's bad for your bod but oh so good for your soul. The Stardust Diner is a yet-another-1950s-style diner, complete with period decorations and a shiny chrome exterior, up in outer east Vancouver on SE 164th Ave just south of Mill Plain Blvd. Me and the Mrs were up there checking in on a friend of her and we stopped by and got some delicious burger-y stuff. 

It has beautiful neon.

Oh, that mustard sky? You might remember last September. The 9th. The Beachie Creek, Lionshead, and Riverside fires were just beginning to cast their mantle over the Metro area, and this was the last day you could see 100 feet in front of your face unobstructed for nearly 10 days. 

Heck of a backdrop for that sign, though

Steel Bridge and Pedestrian Overpass

3865

Another view of the Steel Bridge; this time through the trusses of the pedestrian overpass allowing the walker to pass over the railroad tracks from the area around NE Oregon St and Lloyd Blvd to the walks leading to the Eastbank Esplanade and the bridge itself.

Just an interesting view of human construction, straight lines, triangles, steel. Very urban, very interesting.

That's all, really.

The Grain Elevators At River Mile 12

3864

Just north of the Steel Bridge, standing between the Rose Quarter and the Willamette River, is a hulking grain elevator and shipping facility that seems increasingly out of place in the evolving cosmopolitan atmosphere that seems to obtain there.

This has been an active grain-shipping facility for a very long time now. Since approximately 2010, it's been owned by the Louis Dreyfus Company, one of the biggest firms you never heard of. It's glandularly huge in world commodities; chances are, if you eat, it's touched the ingredients in your food at some point along the line. If you don't eat ... well, good for you, you android you.

Also, fun fact? Julia Louis-Dreyfus, she who was Elaine in Seinfeld and the title character in Veep, is the daughter of the late Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, who ran the company for a while. It's a family-owned joint. 

And this is the name I've known it under; working in transportation dispatching as I have, I've known it as the Louis Dreyfus Dock or just the Dreyfus Dock. But that has come to an end apparently, according to the Portland Business Journal, in '19, LDC sold the facility to an outfit called Rabin Worldwide, who buys and sells industrial properties. It'll either remain empty for a while, remain a grain terminal, or maybe suffer the fate of so much of old Portland: redevelopment. 

So that goes.

Another Aged Directional Sign In The Lloyd District

3863

This picture serves as a reverse angle from the previous one's. 

I mentioned then that State Hwy 99E runs up and down Portland's east side out loud while 99W does it under cover. The previous episode shows directions to the southbound leg of the MLK/Grand couplet. Perforce, this one points you down the northbound leg ...

 ... which is NE Grand Avenue. 

The thing that I really cogged on, noting the obvious weathering of this sign, is that approximately the same weathering is adorning he signs over NE Oregon Street that I captured in the picture in this posting. The new Lloyd District has just about covered the old one over, but there are echoes of what it once was, like old cord, tying the area together, all of a piece. A diffuse one, perhaps, but a piece never the less.

Just A Directional Sign, Doing Its Faithful Best

3862

Oregon Hwy 99E still is considered to run through the east side of town - McLoughlin - MLK/Grand. 99W is no longer signed through town though the streets that it once comprised - Barbur Blvd, Naito Parkway, and Interstate Avenue, are still the Pacific Hwy 1W, in interior ODOT parlance.

You still see State Highway shields on the east side, like this one on westbound Lloyd Blvd between MLK and Grand, letting you know which way you can go at the next light:

 

 

It's a good old, hard working sign ... though it does look like it's blown its paycheck on one too many rock concerts. 

 

But I'm not judging.

A Reminder From I've Been Framed

3861

The best art supply store there ever was, I've Been Framed, 4950 SE Foster Road, if they don't have it, son, you don't need it, is still going hard and fast and strong, just like great art supply stores should.

We've patronized them throughout the pandemic still, and though the browse is nourishment for my psyche (and it has consequently sorely missed this) the same great people are there, and Prairie, the manager, is still rocking it hard (you want a business icon? Forget Musk and Bezos, it's Prairie you should idolize). I hear word that they're working out how they might make the browse happen, but I don't know for sure. Maybe I'm just yearning.

But you want art supplies? Here's your dealer. Check this window out.

Stay revolutionary, my friends.

Help Wanted, Artist-Style

3860

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

3859

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.

The Front Door of The Oregon Vaccine Center

3858

During the emergency, the Oregon Convention Center has been the headquarters for getting your jab on.

This is an angle looking northward up MLK, timed to ensure the marquee is announcing the vaccination event, thus ensuring this image's proper place in local history.

The high-rise beyond is the new Hyatt Regency, a building that I don't expect to see much inside of during my lifetime, because what would I be doing in a Hyatt Regency? I'm just not of that stratum.

Pop Art Media Quiz (Hint: The Answer's "G.")

3857

The pictured item is: 

 

A: The State of Oregon
B: Bowed but unbroken
C: Home
D: $6.99 at the Craft Warehouse store at Gresham Station
E: Something I'm soon going to paint on
F: Particle board
G: All of the above.

The Peace Bell of Sapporo

3856

Portland and Sapporo, Japan, are quite similar cities, I've found out today:

• Both cities are the pivot of metropolitan areas numbering about 2.7 million residents.
• Both cities are near the 45th Parallel: Portland, a s'kosh north, Sapporo, a s'kosh south.
• Both cities area the economic and cultural centers of a large frontier region (Sapporo's prefecture encompasses the entire island of Hokkaido; Oregon is the 10th largest state)
• Both cities inhabit memorable natural surrounds and have a remarkable river running through them
• Both cities built their legacies on exploiting the natural resources of their hinterlands and displacing the indigenous peoples (it is what it is).
  

 It was perhaps natural for the two cities, early in the era of the sister city, to choose each other. The Portland Sapporo Sister City Association dates from 1959, and has just notched its 60th anniversary.

There's a monument to this at the southeastern corner of the Oregon Convention Center. Overlooking the intersection of NE MLK Jr Blvd with Lloyd Blvd, and sheltered by a pergola with a glass roof, is a rather large Japanese bell.

This bell has a significant history of its own. It was gifted to the city of Portland in 1986 and, as part of a renovation project at the OCC culminating in 2019, the bell was rededicated, celebrating its more than 30 years of being here. 

The ceremony was meaningful, not only featuring Sapporo's Mayor Akimoto and our Mayor Wheeler and 90 delegates from Sapporo but also including members of the local indigenous community (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and Cowlitz and Chinook Nation) as well as centering the Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido. 

It's in the open there at the corner of MLK and Lloyd, and you can walk right up to it and enjoy it for the work of art that is, and all that it means, and can mean.

Just Another Photo Of Downtown PDX, Part 2

3855

In the last episode, I published an angle on downtown PDX taken from a certain vantage point in the Lloyd District near the Metro HQ. It appeals because of the way the buildings cluster upon one another and the way they huddle against the West Hills (this an aspect I've always enjoyed about downtown, that the tallest buildings in the State of Oregon are still dwarfed by the hills just west of that. You can't ask for better backgrounds, really).

Portland, though, tells many stories these days, and instead of the idyll that draws so many new moderns here, some of those stories, that you really can't ignore, tell of stresses that some promotionalists would rather leave off.

All you have to do is zoom out a bit.

Sure, it's a trite expression I make here, and not exactly original. But it is the reality. And it's in places where success is supposed to be the order of the day where it speaks particularly of the lack of justice that are the weft of the fabric of our modern times.

Latterly the homeless camp has become an ubiquitous and longer-lived part of the Portland urban experience. This one, at NE Lloyd Blvd and Grand Ave, has existed for a number of months, perhaps closing in on a year. Undoubtedly the pandemic has allowed for a lower frequency of the periodic law-enforcement sweeps that would keep these in motion. 

One wonders what those whose fortune hasn't routed them into one of these places thinks as they go past them. The tension between this and the mumbledy-million-dollar retail and condo towers dominating less than a half-mile away is palpable enough that you can almost reach out into the air and pluck it like an over-taut string. 

There are good people in this town who are working without enough tools and support to fix this. There are indifferent people in this town who are thankful that this isn't them. There's the money, who goes where it will and will probably miss these people altogether. 

And that's Portland, 2021; a story if you frame it just right ... and another one if you change the frame just a little. I have no solutions myself nor do I have suggestions, so, I guess I offer all this banal stream-of-consciousness to say there's a story here each one of us should tune in to, and not forget about.

It's about them, I guess. Those people in the photo that call those tents home. In a city brimming with opportunity, they have none. That's not the Portland I was hoping to see, at this time in my life.

Just Another Photo Of Downtown PDX, Part 1

3854

I can't stop taking pictures of Downtown Portland's skyline like I can't stop taking pictures of Wy'east. It's one of my favorite things and every time I do it it's like writing a quick love note to my hometown.

I will say without reservation, still, the Wells Fargo tower ... which I still think of as the First National Bank Tower ... is amongst the most beautiful. I can see beauty in the minimalism, the stark, no-nonsense thrust for the sky. To see so many newjack towers bunch up against it is a strangeness, though. Even though I was born in Silverton and didn't settle in Portland until '85, achieving a long-sought dream, there's been enough new stuff and I've been in town long enough that I'm feeling that sense of displacement that people in a certain age cohort feel at a certain time in the collective history.

Downtown no longer has the things in it ... the cheap eats, the art stores (save Blick) and the book stores (save Powell's, and with the current demise of the Coffee Room as a place to burn some hours on a bookstore night) that used to call us. The pandemic is a big factor, but as the money moved it, it seems the good stuff has moved on. 

I shouldn't get too distracted there; I still see elements of the downtown me and the Brown Eyed Girl so adored in there, and she keeps saying how we should go down, walk around, and see what we can discover. What can I say - I'm game. And when things aren't so panedmic-y, we shall. 

As the title of this episode suggests, I have more to say. It involves zooming out on this frame, taken on NE Lloyd Blvd just a block or so east of NE Grand Ave, in the shadow of Metro's headquarters, and we'll explore that in the very next episode, so away shall we go. 

3855 or bust, campers!

Wy'east: Bigger From NW Gresham Than You Think

3853

Gresham is, to some degree, defined by Wy'east. The mountain's European name -- Mount Hood -- is all over everything out there; the local community college and about half (it seems) of the businesses in town call themselves Mt Hood-this-or-that.

When you go out there, it's plain to see why. At about 11,245 feet, it is Oregon's tallest mountain, and cuts quite a figure (as I relentlessly document) from just about every viewpoint. Its shape on the horizon has become iconic, in a way, for the Portland Metropolitan Area. And, as big as it seems from Portland, from Gresham, which seems just over the foothills, it looms larger.

This is a view from the upper slopes of the hill Burnside Road descends on before it intersects with Eastman Parkway, NNW of the Gresham business district, on the edge of the desolate parking lot of the still-vacant Gresham K-Mart:

If the greens of the trees in the foreground look a little dark, that's a correct observation. The Brown Eyed Girl wanted to get some views as she too had her camera with her this day, and while the day was more or less fair (with a mugginess that attenuated our energy ... but, still fair) there was a very high overcast that filtered all the sunlight and caused the great mountain to nearly fade into imperceptibility. After I loaded the picture into GIMP and played around with color levels, however, I was able to make the mountain pop out and the foreground became rather artistically abstracted, somewhat. 

A Street Name That Didn't Exist 15 Years Ago

3852

This is a brief bit of Address Nerdery that momentarily obsesses on the way street names change and get extended over time. Dig, if you will, this picture:

This is a corner you come to if you come out of inner NW Portland going east over the Steel Bridge, or if you come west from Grand/MLK and NE Lloyd Blvd. It wasn't a part of Interstate Avenue until only about a decade ago; the only thing I can't determine for sure is what it was called before this. It was either an extension of NE Victoria Avenue, or NE Occident Avenue.

The area around what we now call the Moda Center must be one of the most re-thought urban areas anywhere in Oregon. Before the coming of the Memorial Coliseum, it was Albina's business district, a place also called "Jumptown", the heart of a vibrant jazz scene, and Oregon's black downtown. Then it was decided that Oregon needed a major sports venue; out went the black people, in came the Memorial Coliseum. Then it was decided (by Paul Allen, I think) we needed a bigger and better arena, then came the Rose Garden Arena, though we succumbed to the need to sell naming rights and it became the Moda Center. 

In the process of all that evolution, many streets were renamed, rerouted, and some obliterated and forgotten. In the case of Interstate Avenue, which had other names before it became the main route (pre-Interstate 5) to the Interstate Bridge, hence its modern rubric, before the current revision it turned onto the Steel Bridge just before it crossed the line established by North Williams Avenue, and was fully North Interstate Avenue; after the area was re-thought, Interstate Avenue was extended to the intersection with NE Oregon Street, which is only one block east of where Williams Avenue would be if it extended that far.

So the very southern end of the road is properly NE Interstate Avenue, which, to a long-time Address Nerd, sounds a dissonant note, but it is indeed valid. Strange sounding, but valid.

You Down With OCC? Yeah, You Know Me

3851

The Oregon Convention Center is a remarkable structure, memorable for the two glass spires which pierce the center of the structure. Built in 1989 and opened in 1990 (yes, it's now more than thirty years old ... one supposes that makes it a Millennial) for about 15 years it was the only remarkable landmark in that area and was so visually pleasing that small square signs iconized it for the purposes of semantic guidance.

If one stands at the east end of the Steel Bridge, where eastbound vehicle traffic debouches onto about two and a half blocks of NE Oregon Street, you can frame things just so, and come up with this view ...

If one looks at the directional sign above and on the right, one will see a washed-out square, and that is one of those iconized directional signs mentioned earlier. They, like the signs on the gantry themselves, have been neglected as this is not really that important a through-route anymore. If you want to get to the Lloyd District and its surrounds from inner NW Portland, you're more than likely going to be using the Broadway Bridge, the next one north. However, it does serve as a somewhat forlorn monument to a past that had this as a major connection to North Interstate Avenue ... and a time when the major destination in the area was the Memorial Coliseum, because there was no Rose Garden Arena/Moda Center yet. 

That colorful building on the left there? That's a TriMet facility that I'll use a number of blog entries to explore the artwork on ... but not yet. Soon though, very soon. 

Next Stop: Rose Quarter Transit Center

3850

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.

Fremont, Broadway, and Louis Dreyfus Dock

3849

This is basically an angle of what you see if you took my viewpoint on 3848 and turned 180 degrees.

The red truss is a part of the Broadway Bridge, and the great arch beyond is an irregular visitor to this block, the nearly-iconic Fremont Bridge. The Louis Dreyfus grain elevator is there on the left, and beyond the bridge the boutique condo district that NW Portland has become gives way to what remains of the working port district on the Willamette's right bank.

The grittiness of the area lives on as an echo, but that's getting attenuated as the money comes in. And so it goes. 

The Blue Heart Of Portland

3848

Looking south from the vicinity of the Steel Bridge is looking up-river along the Willamette, in the reach that extends through Portland's veriest city center. There are many bridges and so very many new buildings, most of which you see in this shot did not exist fifteen years ago (again, same planet, different world ... Saint Ursula was prescient in a way).

On the right, downtown; on the left, the burgeoning central east side. Going from foreground to background we see, in whole, the Burnside Bridge, and in parts: the Morrison Bridge, the Hawthorne Bridge, the Marquam Bridge arching above them all, and if you look sharp, one of the towers of the Tilikum Crossing. 

And this is Portland's Blue Heart. 

Steel Bridge With Railway Line

3847

Another of the Steel Bridge, but this time from a slightly more distanct POV.

Just back of the Oregon Convention Center, NE Lloyd Blvd curves northward to meet Interstate Avenue and Oregon Street at the east end of the Steel Bridge. By aiming the camera lens through the bars that prevent people from throwing stuff and climbing down, we get a view that includes a bit of the railway line for a foreground effect that's kind of iron-punk.

I enjoy the graffiti here. The graffiti in these areas always has the artistic touch to it, not some sloppy hit'n'run tag, but some real detail and thought.

The Burnside Bridgehead Has A Skyline Now

3846

... and no, its not a brand new thing. But it is a thing which struck me of having some big-town weight all of a sudden, when I stood back to look at it, this day.

Once upon a time, both 25 years ago but also a hundred million, the area where the east end of the Burnside Bridge tied into the street grid ... the corner of MLK and E Burnside ... there was homeless men's service center called Baloney Joe's. And there was a building that was famous for being in a state of semi-renovation, the Bridgeport Hotel; about five floors of disused building and three or four more floors of just steel girder frame, and the big question was, would anything ever come of that. 

Well, come forward a quarter-century and hundreds of millions of developer dollars, and we have our answer. Fashionable renovations, if-you-have-to-ask-you-cant-afford-it apartment high-rises, and a complete obliteration of what-was-once-was in favor of what-it-now-is. And now, in a place where we once fretted there'd be a Home Depot (seriously, that's what they once had envisioned for the block bounded by MLK/Couch/Burnside/NE 3rd) we have been bowled over by what now looks like a second downtown, or a shiny new business district any town of 75,000 to 100,000 would be thrilled to call their own (even with the Fair-Haired Dumbell). 

Once, just a homeless shelter and a handful of old buildings with furniture stores. Now, same planet ... but a different world.

Downtown Portland As Seen From The MLK Overpass

3845

I've taken many many pictures of the downtown Portland skyline, but I don't recall ever snapping one from the MLK overpass over I-84. 

The brick-red lane almost all the way across the street from my station is the east leg of the inner streetcar loop. Between downtown and me, two lanes of the I-84 ramps to and from I-5 can be seen. And, there are skyscrapers there that haven't been there all that long. 

That's changes. But they don't compare to the changes I'll show off in the next missive. 

The Multimodal Bridge

3844

Multimodal is a funny word. It's clear what it means but it gets used so much by city and transit planners it sounds like one of those power-buzzwords that get hammered to death on resumes.

But multimodal is what the Steel Bridge is, a bridge that, in its hardworking way, links the halves of Portland like no other. Here it is, doing what it does best. Multimodally.

There was, back in the 1980s, before there were multiple MAX lines, the possibility of driving through the middle part of the structure, where that oncoming MAX is right now. It was fun to find yourself driving in front of a train, or with one on the left side of you. As the lines multiplied, though, they took the middle of the bridge for MAX lines only, and relegated cars to the two outside lanes. 

The approaches to the bridge have seen much revision over the past 40 years. 

Willamette River Close-up at the Steel Bridge

3843

The zooming in to make the bridge frame the glimpses of city beyond is always a bit of an irresistible compulsion to me, as is bumping the color up a little.

It's the struggle between fidelity to reality and fidelity to memory; the colors may be more vivid than they were in reality, but they're exactly as vivid as they are in memory. And the satisfaction in devolving the shapes in the girders and the structures they frame by disconnecting them from what they connect to in the greater sense, that makes them make more sense, and making them a more abstract thing is something I also cannot turn away from, and it's satisfying

.  For information's sake, the red truss over the river beyond the supports to the Steel is part of the Broadway Bridge, and the small blocky apartments was once known as McCormick Pier, though it may well have changed its name. Everything down in that area of town has. 

Even the graffiti seems to support the artistic view of the place.

The Steel Bridge, Portland, Oregon, 2021

3842

This is a steel bridge, and it's called the Steel Bridge, and, at one time, it connected the east and west sides of the Willamette River, in Portland, in a pivotal way by being the route US 99W, later OR-99W, crossed the river. Now, it's the pivotal point in the TriMet rail system, carrying all MAX lines over the river except, I suppose, the Orange Line, though the Orange, which brings people in from Milwaukie, becomes north Portland's Yellow Line as it courses through the Transit Mall. At least, I think it does.

It's not the first photo I've ever taken of the Steel, but it's one of the best. It shows off all the charming detail and some of the structural features that make it so unique.

There's an elbow bend of the Willamette in the center of Portland, just north of where the Burnside Bridge crosses, and this is about the narrowest point of the river within Portland city limits. It's at this point the Steel crosses. 

The original Steel Bridge was a swing span in this location, but the current bridge dates from 1912, making it 119 years old, more or less, at this writing. It can be seen from this angle that it's a double-deck bridge and that rail and bike/ped traffic has the bottom whereas car and rail traffic has the top. What's unique about that drawspan is that the bottom retracts into the top, meaning when river traffic needs to pass, if it can clear the un-lifted traffic deck only the lower rail deck needs to lift. 

This makes the lower deck dangerous to be on if one should be so foolish as to use the inside rail deck as your crossing. We recall stories of people being trapped on that deck on lifting, before there was a ped/bike walkway there; their destiny was to be crushed to death between the two decks. 

The bridge in this shot is doing what it does best, linking the east and west sides of the Rose City via transit-rail; a newer MAX bound to the Rose Quarter, an older MAX bound for the Portland Mall. Wikipedia claims it's perhaps the most 'multimodal' bridge in the world; the only double-deck lift bridge with independent lifts, and the second-oldest vertical-lift bridge in the world, second only to the Hawthorne, which is just around the corner. 

It's old and new, rustic and modern. A contradiction in terms that somehow makes perfect sense.

Stark Street, Downtown Montavilla, April 2021

3841

This is a picture I've taken before but I was in the right spot today, so I took it again. 

This was part of me and the Brown Eyed Girl's sojourn to get her her 2nd Pfizer Covid vaccine dose, amongst other things. I did a bunch of walking. And, in the afterglow of known my spouse is fully vaccinated, and all the errands are run, I have about 160 photos taken on the day ... the most productive in a while.

I think the farthest one can see here at this angle is about SE 92nd Avenue; this was taken where Stark and Washington devolve from SE Thorburn Street at abut SE 74th. So, about a mile.

More, as usual to come. Also a few more views of Rocky Butte. 

On A Clear Day, You Can See Vancouver

3840

I guess I'm on a Rocky Butte tear today. So be it.

The majority of the sightline pictures of my Rocky Butte posting flux were looking east, and I suppose I have an excuse for that, as the Cascade Range is simply a fantastic thing to gaze at and I every day thank the cosmic chance that caused me to come to be here, in this area, because visually I never tire of being alive here. 

Looking east from Rocky Butte is engaging, for different reasons. You look upon Portland's undulating east side, ranks of houses and streets, many many trees, and there's always north of the Columbia.

Dig, if you will ...

I will now amuse myself (and bemuse you, the reader) by pointing out some things in the photo.

That blue swath across the middle is, of course, the mighty Columbia. On this side of the river, closest in, that area of beige flat-top industrial buildings shows where NE Killingsworth St (at this time next year, NE Lombard St, remember) runs east from 82nd. That peculiar-looking double-humped building, the blue gray edifice, is the Boeing Paint Hangar. 

Yep, that's where planes get painted. Also visible there are some jets, presumably in the finishing stages, and to the right of those, the clear area just south and west of PDX, which is a good place to put a Brobdingnagian painting booth for your jet planes. 

The bridge right about dead-center in the photograph is the Interstate Bridge, carrying I-5 over the river into Washington. We'll be replacing that bridge in the next few years, unless we don't, like what happened the last time. Stay tuned there.  And just above and left of that is the railroad bridge, and just beyond that, another shipping ship. 

North bank: you'll notice some tall structures there. This is adjacent to downtown Vancouver, but it's not downtown Vancouver, its the port facilities that I picted a few weeks ago from the other side, from Kelley Point. Vancouver city center is the collection of low-slung blocky shapes immedately to the right of that. Vancouver city center is in a state of flux; they're building a new waterfront district, and developer money is flowing into the area like mad, and there's no plans for new high-rises, but the place is on the grow. 

Backing it all up on the horizon is that spur of the Coast Range we call the Tualatin Mountains, that part of which you'll find Forest Park in.

Wy'East Over Morning Traffic

3839

A throwback to December 2019: Wy'east, on a chill morning, while I was still using the ten-toe express to get to and from werk, during the Time-Of-No-Olivia.

I hated not having the VW (and it was causing no small amount of stress) but the scenery was a compensation.

Anyone reading this? I've a suggestion. Live your life as though you were a tourist there. Sight-see your world even if you've seen it a billion times before. I can only speak for myself here, but in a life in which I hunger for, and am largely bereft of artistic stimulation (we proles don't need art, you see), it's gotten me a hell of a long way.