By Samuel John Klein of Portland, Oregon - Graphic Designer without Portfolio, aspiring artist who dawdled too long.
This is the sort of photo you shouldn't take with your digital camera but I risk it occasionally: I love the flare of the sun and the sea with an about-to-be-setting sun, why, I've always felt that rather romantic.
This was a glance back over the shoulder as we left Neahkahnie Mountain and got underway toward Garibaldi and Tillamook. I pointed, composed plentyquick and snapped the shutter.
Camera seems fine. Just don't make habit of it, yes.
I have taken a picture of this sign before, so its reappearance here is just confirmation that some things in Portland stay, for now, satisfyingly familiar.
Picture it: it's the 60s, and East 122nd isn't the commercial corridor that it is today, and is certainly a lot more whitebread. And, out in this area, two brothers build competing car dealerships.
If they ever gave this road a name-name, it should perhaps be Tonkin Boulevard. At the north end, at NE Halsey St, Marv Tonkin built a Ford dealership (now Courtesy Ford) that left us a long time ago but whose jingle still rattles around in the mind of some of us old-timers.
It's brother Ron's dealership, however, that survived, and became a local empire unto itself, including a Nissan dealership across from his brother's old location (spun off into Russom's Nissan of Portland) and a ultra-luxury dealership called Ron Tonkin's Gran Turismo (which has latterly removed to Wilsonville).
The 122nd Ave dealership still stands strong in its original location though,as does the three-story sign, which was a common thing back when things like this were built but today is, truly, the last of an ancient breed, even outliving its namesake founder.
I mean, even the old Wentworth Chevytown sign (and the used-car lot it was planted in) is gone now.
But long may Ron razzle-dazzle us, out 122nd way.
At the northwest corner of Tillamook County, there's a headland called Neahkahnie Mountain. US 101 cruises along it.
Neah kah nie, according to MacArthur (Oregon Geographic Names) might be translated as the place of the god Acarna in the language of the Tillamook, the indigenous people of the area (if you see the name 'Necarney' elsehwere in the area, the derivation may be similar).
In terms of a scenic viewpoint, it's close to incomparable.
The viewpoint, about 400 feet up as the GPS metadata from this photo indicates, is looking approximately southeast, and takes in a number of notable locations.
I've pointed them out in this annotated version, herewith:
We take in quite a bit of territory, yes? All gorgeous.
The beach at our feet is interesting because, unlike most of the beaches one gets do in this section of the coast, it seems quite rocky rather than sandy.
It's a testament to the super-zoom powers of the point-n-shoot, the Canon PowerShot SX 230 HS, that I can get this short of Wheeler, on the shore of Nehalem Bay, more than 5 miles away.
If you enjoy the Oregon Coast, and stop to think how much easy access modern Oregonians have to so very much beach, think of Oswald West.
Oswald West, born in Canada, was Oregon's 14th governor; he served one term from 1911 through 1915 (he declined to run for a second term). His legacy is a decidedly mixed bag. Not only was he a ardent prohibitionist, he promoted Oregon's Eugenics law of 1913 (Google "Portland Vice Scandal", where gay men were victimized. Not a pretty picture.)
However, in another important way he was visionary. It's because of him we have all this beach access, access to a degree that leaves visitors to Oregon typically stunned.
At the Neahkahnie Mountain viewpoint, looking south on US 101 in northwestern Tillamook County, there is the following monumental plate:
The monument reads thus:
IF SIGHT OF SAND AND SKY AND SEA
HAS GIVEN RESPITE FROM YOUR DAILY ARES
---
THEN PAUSE TO THANK
OSWALD WEST
FORMER GOVERNOR OF OREGON (1911-1915)
--- - ---
BY HIS FORESIGHT
NEARLY 400 MILES OF THE OCEAN SHORE
WAS SET ASIDE FOR PUBLIC USE
FROM THE COLUMBIA RIVER ON THE NORTH
TO THE CALIFORNIA BORDER ON THE SOUTH
---
THIS MARKER IS ERECTED AND DEDICATED
BY THE GRATEFUL CITIZENS OF OREGON
TO COMMEMORATE
THIS OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT
IN THE CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES
This much is truth, too. Under Oswald West, the Oregon Highway Commission - the forerunner of today's ODOT - was created in 1913, and proclaimed the Oregon Beach Highway Law, which declared Oregon's beach coastline as a public highway to the high water line. This was the seed which finally bore fruit as the Beach Bill, HB 1601 of 1967, during the Tom McCall administration.
This is why Oregonians have all that beach to play on.
... to close out the day's debouche, just a simple look out over the sand from the end of Second Street, city center Cannon Beach, made special by the sprinkling of birds thereupon.
Again, Haystack Rock, but a much closer view.
The main street through the middle of Cannon Beach is Hemlock Street. coming south out of city center it ascends a hill and curves about quite a bit. This is your best vantage point from the road, if you can find a spot to pull over.
While the earlier pix from the beachfront at Tolovana Park are romantic and pretty, POV gives you a much better idea of just how hulkingly large Haystack rock is, some blocks back from the beach and up the side of a hill, it's a rather intimidating thing.
My subtitle elaborates a bit, but it sounds romantic that way.
But it is a fact that even if Oregon's state bird is the western meadowlark (unless it's the osprey now; I don't know how that debate shook out to be honest), at the beach, the state bird is the kite
Here's one in splendiforous plumage.
And wouldn't you know it, developers have been here too. I mean, probably some condo for upscale crabs, or something.
I mean, here in Portland that'd be $1,600/month, first, last, deposit, 12 month lease, right?
Our destination this day, as mentioned, was Cannon Beach: artistic, rustic, adorable Cannon Beach.
Like many towns along the Oregon Coast, it's longer than it is wide; it stretches along about two miles of beach but only goes back maybe about 1,000 feet at its widest. Address-Nerd-wise, this is how a town with only about 2,500 residents can have a 4000 block.
Anyway. the best place to have a look outside of downtown is the south-side neighborhood called Tolovana Park, which amounts to the half of town south of the knobby hill just south of the downtown area. There one finds the Tolovana Beach State Wayside, which is merely steps from the sand.
It's quite a popular place.
Oregonians at the beach doing what Oregonians at the beach do. In the distance are a group of rocks at a small promontory called Silver Point; the biggest one is called Jockey Cap.
They're gorgeous, but they don't quite compare with the icon you see looking the other way.
It's 230 feet worth of iconic seastack, and they call it, for obvious reasons, Haystack Rock. If there's a rock that can stand in for the entire Oregon Coast, this surely must be a candidate.
The small rocks off to the left of it are collectively known as The Needles. And in front are two more Oregonians doing what Oregonians do at the beach.
Here now a more postcard-y approach that I'm quite proud of:
I took many many pictures of the rock because I have had none up until now and I was atoning for that.
Another thing I took many pictures of was surf, for surf's sake. They say you can't hear a picture but I know the sound that resonates in the skull when I look at this one:
Surf is a magical thing, even if you don't ride the waves.
The glassy sheen of wet beach is its own poetry.
The pandemic and other centrifugal force hammered our chances at a 30th wedding anniversary that was anything other than mild stress and deferred disappointment.
We made up for it this year. We brought some healing ... after all, what Oregonian waits more than a decade for a visit to the coast?
Last Thursday, buoyed on the goodwill of a friend or two and with a Brown Eyed Girl who knows from budgeting, we made new memories.
From sea level to 4000 feet.
From the waves to the volcano.
Hither we hence.
The journey of a thousand words starts at home, and home is Portland. I don't get in as many skyline shots as I used to, and there have been many more changes. That big slate colored variegated thing in front of my beloved Wells Fargo Tower, for instance. This is our new County Courthouse.
It's about as exciting a design as a legal form.
The Brown Eyed Girl chose the start of the route and let whim take over after that. It was US 26, our Sunset Highway, that would be our route out. And it was an uneventful and mundane drive as we won free of the west-side suburban belt, eventually to emerge into the rolling farmland west and north of Hillsboro.
West of Banks one passes through dilute communities with names like Timber and Manning and you're now in backcountry NW Oregon -- the one with all them hills and all them trees.
Unlike the other main routes west from the Valley, the Sunset Highway route has a little treat. Everyone knows about the Vista Ridge Tunnel, back in the city, but not everyone thinks of this one:
This is a tunnel that was built in the mid-1940s (I've no idea how they got round this hill before then). It was, at the time, known as the Sunset Tunnel. In the winter of 1999, however, we had remarkably heavy rain and the tunnel was looking as though its structural integrity was questionable.
ODOT sent a maintenance super, a man named Dennis Edwards, out to inspect, and while in the tunnel, it made good on its promise, collapsing on him and killing him.
In respect of his memory, they named it for him: it's officially the Dennis L. Edwards Tunnel. it has a button to mash, there on the lower right, which will set the lights on that sign over the top of the portal to flashing on behalf of bicyclists who will want you to know they are in there.
Otherwise, tunnel traffic goes on as ever, with all motorists honking loudly while going through it, because that's what you do in a tunnel.
Our destination, guided partly by whim and partly by desire, was to be Cannon Beach.
As is being reported by various news outlets, such as KGW, here, Portland's WHL hockey franchise, the Winterhawks, are updating their logo and entire graphic identity system.
It's a timely change. I doubt it's escaped the notice of anyone likely to read this blog, but the growing awareness of cultural appropriation and what it means in today's society is an issue that we must meet in some way. The professional sports world, which has in the past helped itself fairly readily to cultural symbols from, in a great amount, indigenous First Nations cultures, has met it in a variety of ways ranging from embracing the change to obstinately resisting it.
The Winterhawks' now-former logo is problematic for at least two reasons: the image itself being a First Nations warrior, and the method of original adoption - back in tthhe 1970s, the team originally had to scrounge for uniforms, and some surplus Chicago Blackhawks uniforms were available, and the team apparently just rolled with the design.
The logo and identity redesign released today meets the challenge of sports team identity in the modern age where casual cultural appropriation is an issue rather admirably, I think. The new main logo ...
.... divorces itself from the old in a way that is positive and aspriational, really. The head of a red-tail hawk, colored white to reflect snow and ice, the detail in the head feathers acknolwedging the past in a positive manner, the stylized mountain, even the artful concealing of the letters W and H in the mountain's detail. There is much to like about this logo, and a perfect time for its introduction to have a positive impact.
There is more to the identity system than this; a whole range of wordmark and palette design changes that are throrough and thoughtful. It's most impresssive, and can be seen via a link to a Scribd file at the KGW story which I've linked here: https://www.kgw.com/article/sports/hockey/winterhawks/portland-winterhawks-replace-native-american-logo-mascot-unveil-new-logo/283-a2266c1c-671e-4a6e-89bc-05892b0f6af6
It's an unanswerable question, I suppose, and everyone who fancies themselves artists asks themselves something similar:
It was such a simple step. What took me so long?
Today I took that yellow ochre sketch and added burnt sienna for the shadow areas, and the form rose off the canvasboard to meet my eye.
The point of the work is to explore using directed strokes to impart a feeling of volume and I'm actually fairly thrilled to be able to say to myself that I have grasped that just a bit.
Burnt sienna also for the shadow under the elephant and darkening in the trees in the distance.
This is the warm underpainting that will support the cooler colors I'll by layering atop ... for which stay tuned anon.
I like this silhouette bit more than the last time I did it. A lot more.
It's still not perfect. But it's better.
Over a year and a half before this, I was working through a book called Learn to Paint in Acrylics With 50 Small Paintings. I got up to number 46, a painting of an elephant that explores contour painting techniques. And it was at that point that, for some reason, even though I had absorbed many of the techniques well, or so I had thought, I ran into the wall I ran into so very many times.
It's not a wall so much as a fog that pushes back. I can spend time dissecting it but knowing what stopped me wouldn't have done much more than given me labels for it all. If you're trying to reinvent yourself as an artist, you know what I'm talking about without another word and I can't find one anyway.
So it all sat there on my drawing board for more than a year, waiting for me to get back to it, while I did PBNs, wasted time off a dwindling life span (statistics being what they are) and letting my social media addiction get the best of me. Not that different from the billions of self-made aspiring artists in the virtual world, really.
I thought about the idea of shortcuts and assists, then. It occurred to me one of the things I didn't like about that first attempt at this was I couldn't sketch out the shape in yellow ochre and feel confident about it; the harder I tried, the sourer it felt. This, I theorize, is what pushed me off the track and landed me straight in the mud. And all the inertia and ennui followed.
It occurred to me that I didn't have to be flawless about my sketching to start and further, I already knew techniques that would allow me to transfer a reference to the media. It was so simple! It just involved, in this case, printing a copy of a scan from the page, coating the back of it with soft graphite (4B Prismacolor Monolith, for what that's worth) laying the print on my media (still the eight-by-eight canvasboard) and rubbing.
A bone folder from my GD days did the burnishing duty. This is what I have:
That light gray pattern is a basic outline concentrating on the shadow areas. It should be enough to get me started, again.
Wish me luck.
The secrets. I has them now. THE SECRETS ARE MINE.
The book: Editorial Cartooning. The author: Dick Spencer III, School of Journalism, State University of Iowa. Published by The Iowa State College Press, 1949.
Since I've managed to acquire just about every modern art technique book I'm likely to want I have begun to be fond of vintage art instruction books. Bob Ross, Mark Crilley, Christopher Hart, all those, have defined this genre, but even they stand on others' shoulders: Jon Nagy, Bill Alexander, and others. Those forbears are oftimes as interesting as their intellectual descendants.
Never heard of this Dick Spencer III guy, though. I intend to find out. Important enough to author a college-published book about the subject.
I have some suspicion that the secrets may be beyond their pull-dates though.
This is, of course, one of my new favorite things. Credit the Brown Eyed Girl with the inspiration.
What happens here is you take one of those little 30-ct mulit-function silver-cord firefly lights that Sierra Pacific Crafts makes, and if you're lucky you have one of these lenses from a vintage crossing signal, and you just set the lights up behind it and let it go. The frosted glass in the translucent parts do the job they were intended to and the result is a very gentle trippiness.
There's a story behind that piece of glass. Back when Bill Trafton owned the VW shop at 157th and Stark, his shop was a gallimaufy of the sort you'd expect a mechanic of his calibre who's been in business for multiple decades to have. And he, for no clear reason but much gratitude from me, laid this upon me. The Brown Eyed Girl had the lights and realized that putting the two together was a natural thing.
Trafton VW still exists, but really just as a name. A few years back, Bill retired at long last and a European auto repair operation called Steve's Imports (their main office is down on SE 92nd between the Springwater Trail crossing and the light at Flavel. When they bought Trafton's they brought a slick, shiny operation in and moved all the old-school groove out.
Now, don't get me wrong ... I'll bet they do superlative work, and probably with prices to match. Bill Trafton was the kind who'd have a VW boneyard in the back and give you a copy of Muir's Idiot's Guide or maybe even spot you the price on an expensive repair.
He had that old-school VW spirit, and was a one-of-a-kind guy. The new operators are professionals and good at what they do ... but nowhere near as charming.
So it goes.
... and they are that ladykin and that window sign.
The ladykin has haunted the front part of the store for nearly a decade I think, and I first met that delightful window sign in about 2012. Mark told me a little story about it, that it was painted by another IBF fan based on a Banksy work. I just like the wittiness of it, the way it reminds me of a magazine cover, and the sassy little thanks a lot! in the lower left corner.
The back wall, I recognize; it's left of entrance as you come in ... well, when you could come in, pre-pandemic. I understand Prairie and the staff are re-thinking the store layout to make it more traffic-friendly; the idea, if I understand it correctly, is to make it so people can browse and also put some of that social-distancing logic in.
Since everything is opening up I was hoping to hear the same sort of thing coming out of my beloved IBF, but there's been nothing ... yet. And I support this, because Prairie knows best.
The picture, for what it's worth, was taken sometime in 2017. So near in the past yet so very far away.
This is a clock tower at the southwest corner of SE 122nd Avenue and Division Street, as seen from Division, going east. The Division Center, a rubric with a sort of awkward poetry to it, refers to the shopping center it serves as a landmark for.
The building was Payless ShoeSource for a long time before it was a cell phone store. In my fantasies, it's an art supply store run by me and my wife.
We have two clocktowers on SE 122nd Avenue. One is at the Mighty Mighty Midland Branch Library, the other, here. They have one thing in common. The correct time would not be that thing.
This photo was taken at about 8:20 PM, last Wednesday. That is not, as it can be seen, the time on the face of the clock. There is little doubt in my mind that, had we gone down 122nd and the library clock would have also been askew. Not the same way, of course; that would give away the conspiracy of ... something, somehow.
See, Out 122nd Way, you can have accurate time, or cool clock towers.
You cannot, apparently, have both.
Performing in front of the Skidmore Fountain where SW 1st Avenue and Ankeny Street come together.
A May afternoon in the year 2010.
I can't remember what music they were playing, but judging by the instruments involved, that combo needed some authentic courage.
First and Ankeny exist on a boundary of the old original town of Portland on the south and the Couch tract on the north; streets change direction at that point from aligning with the river, which trends NNE-SSW, to roughly aligning with the North Star. And it kind of shows; Ankeny is an incredibly skinny street, and First jogs its way through. The result is a delightfully oddly shaped space where the streets almost, but not quite, align. Were it now for the MAX tracks running through it would be a most lovely public square.
We have a block in town we locals nicknamed "Pioneer Square", but it's full name is Pioneer Courthouse Square, named for the building that overlooks it from the east, and despite a similar rubric, it has no spiritual congruence with Seattle's Pioneer Square.
There is a place in Portland that feels like Seattle's Pioneer Square, though ... it's the Skidmore Fountain.
This is the year this girl turns 50.
I drive a 50 year old car. The styling, though, is timeless.
I call this Olivia on Sandy Boulevard (Parkrose Interlude 2021).
She's washed, lubed, the oil's been changed (just in time, I'd say) and the valves have been adjusted. It's hard to fine good VW mechanics and ours is damned good ... and a bit off-the-beam. But classic VW mechanics are like mad scientists, in the good way.
When it finally cools the hell down, I've the idea to road trip with her down through Silverton because that's where I learned to love VWs. Many pixs should ensue from that ... but that's anon.
Anonish.
If they hadn't been setting up for today's Parkrose Marketplace, I never would have glanced. And I've driven by this bit of road for years now.
About 100 feet or so of NE 108th Avenue immediately off Sandy Blvd ... between the former furniture store withe the guy in the black hat on the sign and the former dive bar ... has these most delightful large dots of color painted on it. And as it happens they're having a neighborhood market today. Of course, the heat being what it is, if you ain't started by now I'd not go, but if you're in Portland and of the mind to do so, might be fun to check out.
Today they started early, at 9 AM, to beat the heat, but it was almost in the 80s by the time I went by around 7:30 AM, so I don't know how successful that move was. I do wish them well, and think maybe we'll go and experience some local color when it isn't so damnably hot.
To view this, you have to go one block east of the last one (3952) on West Burnside and look south on SW 12th Avenue.
I'm not sure what the message is supposed to be, but to me it's "Grandma's fallen and she can't get up and also she can't really dress herself and her lower jaw has fallen clean out of her head, so we should probably help her.
I don't clearly know why I identify the figure as a female one. It could be either.
I adore public art. I just don't pretend to always understand it. With art, I find it's more fun, sometimes, not to 'get it'.
The sight line down SW Harvey Milk Street as viewed from West Burnside west of SW 13th Avenue encourage you to fixate upon a surrealism.
I have a feeling Magritte would approve. Also would Luigi Serafini, I think. The pattern that the fellow's shirt is 'decorated' with is a favorite of mine, and I only say that because back when everyone was doing that weird rock'n'roll 'S' on their Pee-Chee's, I was filling the blanks spaces on mine with this.
Nothing too profound or prolix about this shot, though I do enjoy the perspective feel that the diminishing traffic signal gantries and overhead street blades provide.
You've got Grand, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th crossing East Burnside here, then that small hill to a slightly higher flat, that's at 12th.
There's a triangluar block in downtown Portland. It has lived many lives.
This block is bounded on the north by West Burnside Street, on the east by the 300 block of SW 12th Avenue, and on the south by SW Harvey Milk Street, formerly SW Stark Street. There are two buildings on this small block; at the gore point, an impossibly small, unnervingly-narrow two-story building, and taking up the remainder, a four-story hotel.
The tiny building at the point was a radio station studio, KKEY. Those who've been here long enough will remember the big call sign in stacked type adorning that point. Few, if anyone, will remember its programming, which was unremarkable and made little history; back in the day, two people of my acquaint had a show there, but only as long as they could drum up the sponsors.
What sort of penny-ante operation made its on-air talent (and for KKEY you could use the word rather loosely) do its own sales? Well - I believe I just answered that.
The hotel itself used to be home to a gay swinger's place called Club Portland. In the 1990s, the McMenamins bought the place and got rid of the sordid stuff and graced the whole with a more historic name ... Crystal Hotel ... and that trademark McMenamins bland class. So it goes.
My memories must suffice to describe what once was. This picture is what it is:
West Burnside is in front of us. Harvey Milk Street slants off to the right. There's been a tectonic change to the traffic pattern as well, as one has not been able to veer off Burnside onto Stark for quite a few years, and the Portland compulsion to let people dine in the middle of the street combined with times of Covid has populated that block Harvey Milk Street into a seat of al-fresco umbrellas.
Look at what the Brown Eyed Girl peeped and pointed me at yesterday, on NW 11th Avenue adjacent to Powell's:
She saw it from back in the Orange Room approaching the checkout; from a distance it looked like a Google Maps Street View car. This is what I found when I got out there though: note the text on the rear door.
It had California plates, which is appropriate.
I learned that Apple is rolling out a feature for Apple Maps, similar to Google's Street View, called Look Around. Unlike Google Maps, Apple Maps doesn't have a web portal though, so if you want to see me taking a picture of them taking a picture of me taking a picture of them, you'll have to employ your mobile device.
I don't know when to expect my image to show up on Apple Maps, as I don't recall how long it takes digital pictures to be developed these days.
And so it goes.
Took a break from posting for a few days because of an incident I am still unpacking an unpleasant event that had happened in SE Portland that involved taking pictures.
I may comment about that anon, but I don't know. Since this isn't exactly the most popular chronicle of the times, it wouldn't make much difference, I imagine.
So, here's something cheerful, happy, and lovable. A scene from the corner of the studio, the happiest place on earth, with two of the most lovable things on that earth: Tabitha and Ralph.
We have a daylight basement in our house. It stays about 70F all year long, and with a searing heat wave coming up it'll be a place we'll all remain, probably. And those windowsills are a cat's dream. Wide, flat, spacious.
These two cats are living their best lives in those windows alone.
Chez ZehnKatzen, where every day is Caturday.
This missive, and this picture, document (or attempt to) a singular emotion.
Life moves past you at an odd clip. It's not constant. And it seems gradual, until that moment it's not.
I'm aging. I don't make an issue of what my exact age is; if you read enough of my rattling, I'm sure you can reason it out. But it's sunk in that I've been around a while, and despite being born in Silverton and spending my teens and twenties around Salem and Corvallis, I've been a Portlander the majority of my life now (the implications vis a vis lifespan I'll not dwell on for the moment, if it's alright with y'all).
I've seen changes, is what I'm saying. The town I fell in love with as a kid and commenced a long process of killing myself to become a local in has become, fulsomely, a fundamentally different place.
Dig, if you will, this picture.
If you go to the riverside esplanade just the other side from Naito Parkway of the Waterfront Pearl condos, you go to the north end of that walk, which is as far as it goes (for now), and you look southwest, you see the above view.
The street intersection is NW Naito Parkway and NW 9th Av.
I spoke of changes. I used to work in this area at a building that still stands where NW 15th and Thurman merge and cross the railroad tracks, just across from where NW Naito Parkway reverts to its seminal name, NW Front Av. I doubt that anyone living now in the condo tower forest that has spread from the Main Post Office building to that point can even envision that it was once a rather vacant urban wasteland; a big rail yard. I still remember. My office left that area around 2005; from our offices windows we watched the steady encroachment of development. Not even I figured it would get that far but there it is, now.
There were comics when I was a kid, where the protagonist would be projected into the future. They'd look around, gobstopped in wonder, as they viewed great glittering futuristic towers, sided in glass and shining steel, some with curving, sculpted sides and they'd stare agape at architectures they could only just comprehend.
As I looked at those buildings from that point on that day, a certain emotion started in my head and reached down and took hold of my heart, and I realized that I was that guy. This was still Portland. I still grokked the geography. But something that was, within my adult memory, acres of vacant lots and rail yard had become this hulking, crowded thing.
Same planet, but a different world. And I was aware of it, as though it was, for a moment, a palpable thing, a thing that could be held in my hand.
Parents have had this feeling, in their times and ways. Our collective descendants will have the same experience, Anthropogenically-induced environment change-willing.
And now, I guess, it's my turn.
This should go amongst one of the Portlandest pictures ever. For reference, this is facing westbound at the corner of NE Grand Avenue and Couch St.
Stark's Vacuums is one of that vanishing breed of quintessential Portland purveyors of commerce that is not only as Portland AF but also has survived through generations; 2022 will mark Stark's 90th year in business. If you wanted a really good Covid-era face mask, you've been there latterly. If you want a great vacuum, you will go there. And if you're not near this one, there are nine locations scattered across the Portland Metro area.
This particular one has been kind of the Home Office of the company. This, NE Grand and Couch, is the location that holds their renowned Vacuum Museum, which once occupied the windows looking out onto Couch you can see in the photo, but has been moved to another part of the building as the Couch side has been made into another leasable space.
Looking at what's been written about that Vacuum Museum, you get an idea that 
vacuums aren't just something Stark's is good at selling. This outfit is scary serious about them. But, then again, Portland's always been good at being intense about things long before they're cool; Stark's was rocking vacuums back with 'Dyson sphere' was just something SF writers and astrophysicists talked about. They also have the best damn logo anybody ever came up with for a vacuum cleaner company, and I will fight you on this.
This picture sucks. But totally in the best possible way.
You have to be watching very carefully to know when you cross from one street to the other here, because it won't seem like you have changed from one street to another at all.
SE Thorburn St and SE Gilham Av serve one main purpose in the Portland traffic greater-scheme-of-things: channelling traffic from E Burnside St at a point just east of E 67th Av around the shoulder of Mount Tabor and down through Montavilla on the Stark-Washington couplet. Though one is technically an avenue and the other a street, due to their layout, which respects the topography of that side of the mountain in order to have terraces for salable housing lots, they meet at such an acute angle that if it was any smaller they'd be parallel streets.
At any rate, SE Gilham Av is the most advantageous connection to Thorburn east of Gilham which goes from a 2-lane neighborhood street with speedbumps collecting traffic from Stark west of Mount Tabor to a four-lane boulevard after Gilham merges in. There are an annoying lack of of visual cues to hint to the driver they're actually on a different street now, reinforced by the way the grading directs traffic.
Long story short, if you want to just get to Montavilla off East Burnside, just go with the flow. If you want to know which street you're actually on, look sharp; there are weathered signs hiding in the foliage.
Another one of those tight zoom shots I love doing so much because they make me think telephoto.
This is looking down SE Stark Street into downtown Montavilla. The hillside ahead is the north shoulder of Mount Tabor.
There's an interesting thing I found out about Mount Tabor recently. Apparently there's a standard for height below which a peak will not be named "Mount" by whatever geographic nomenclature authority applies (a board under the aegis of the USGS, I think) and Mount Tabor does not meet that standard. However, since generations of Oregonians have called in Mount Tabor, the history of the name establishes the right.
The name Montavilla was inspired by Mount Tabor, but in an indirect way according to the book Portland's Streetcar Lines, published in 2010 by Richard Thompson. The community was named Mount Tabor Village, originally, but signage of the first streetcar lines abbreviated this Mt. Ta. Villa. Over time this evolved into Montavilla as the coinage grew popular.
The streetcar line died long ago. Its cultural rubric child, however, has never been stronger.
Also, at 76th and SE Stark, you'll find Mr. Plywood. Best urban lumber store ever. Just take my word for that.
The following not a picture I took, but one that my spouse, the Brown Eyed Girl, took back in 2009, and is one I wish I took ... not because I can take it any better, but because I was not in San Francisco with her. I have used it hence without permission from her, yet.
The Golden Gate Bridge should need no further introduction. And this is a fine, fine picture of it.
I did take one liberty, and that's playing with the color saturation. I upped it, and it looked like one of those pictures you see on postcards with the saturated color, and I found it so charming that I had to roll with it. It was taken, as said before, by my spouse, who was in California for a few days helping a beloved friend relocate to Modest "O".
San Francisco is such a romantic city to me. I care not for bucket lists, but as far as I have one, visiting San Francisco with my love is on it.
Bridge number two of Bridge Day is one of the ones built during my lifetime. As a matter of fact, I got to watch it on TV ... had to, I'd say. I was living in Silverton at the time.
The Fremont Bridge was the final link in the inner city freeway loop that is formed by I-5 and I-405. It is a tied-arch bridge, and made news because the center of the span was fabricated in California, assembled just downriver on Swan Island, and barged from Swan Island to the worksite, where it was hoisted into place using 32 giant hydraulic jacks.
They telecast the beginning of the lift early one evening in March 1973. I don't know how long it took but the allotted program time wasn't near enough long, I'm certain.
A schoolkid at the time, I made numerous drawings on looseleaf. It became something of an obsession.
It's almost 400 feet up to the top of that arc from the river. It also has a nest of peregrine falcons.
Today is Bridge Day for no other reason than I had three bridge pictures to post.
We at The ZehnKatzen Times do not plan on making this a repeating thing, although I live in a city that has bridges and I adore them, they'll sneak in here from time to time.
None of them are pierless, I'm afraid.
From last week, then, a bridge I don't have so many pictures of: the Broadway Bridge. It's a Rall-type bascule (Rall after the man who devised this particular method, and bascule meaning drawbridge with a leaf or two leaves as the draw span) that was built in 1913. It connects Broadway on the east to Broadway on the west, and that precedence is important because Broadway, in Portland, was born on the east side and only became a west side street after this bridge connected it to Seventh Street North and the name was extended.
Until the Great Renaming, it was known as Broadway south of Burnside, Broadway North north of Burnside, and East Broadway east of the Willamette.
The connection, which completes a stringing of Broadway through four of the city's now-six address areas, makes a most unique route of Broadway, technically both a Street (east of the river) and an Avenue (west of the river). As I understand it, though, the correct rubric is simply Broadway, no Ave or St, though there are some older blades on the east side that may still say NE Broadway St, and are being superseded by the new-look street blade design.
The design of the lift mechanism makes for some slow bridge lifts. Multnomah County's page on the Rall design cites it as the slowest lift of all the bridges, with average lift times of ten minutes.
Having been caught on the Broadway during some of those lifts, I can confirm. It takes forever. If you have to be somewhere and time is tight, use another bridge, if you can.
You'll thank me later for this advice, I'm sure.
This is a picture that I've taken before and perhaps have even posted versions of before here. This is coming off the Burnside Bridge, effectively over Naito Parkway, so we're about 5 blocks east of Big Pink, approximately only 1/4 mile.
Our skyscraper now dwarfs the surrounds, well exceeding the visual weight of the West Hills just beyond. The coloring that gives it its nickname stands out a little better. Its importance to the Portland skyline is obvious now.
It stands at the north end of Portland's historic downtown core, and, as such, has a lot of older Portland buildings around it, unlike the Wells Fargo tower about three-quarters of a mile south along the same street, which is surrounded by a waist-high forest of newer towers. Big Pink stands out more.
And coming down into downtown down the gradual slope of the west end of the Burnside Bridge is also a fun feeling. I never tire of it.
That's the third part of the triptych, and thank you for following me downtown. Maybe soon we'll make this trek back to Powells, as we used to do so regularly. Things need to heal up a bit more, though, I guess.
This is the view of our objective from where 32nd crosses East Burnside, the eastern gateway to the Laurelhurst neighborhood.
Between the last photo and this, The Burn flattened out from 60th until 47th. At 47th, the road dips and goes into the grove of trees that are a trademark of shady, leafy Laurelhurst, and the Burnside does a little bit of a sway. It straightens out quickly after it crosses César E Chávez, and being at the brow of another slope provides another bit of advantageous topography.
I really hate that car in front of us. Spoilt an otherwise perfect shot. But there it is, hail Eris. Visible also in front of Big Pink there is the newly-built 5MLK building, at the corner of SE Grand and The Burn, which looks immediately adjacent due to foreshortening but is actually on the same side of the Willamette as we are at this point.
Next photo closes the rest of this gap.
