[pdx_legends] Kirk Reeves: The Death of a Showman

2889.Last week, about this time, was when we first heard of it. Rumors, not in the sense of sinister whispers but of simple, unverified information, that someone was no longer with us.

Kirk Reeves has died, the rumors said.

None of us believed it at first; none of us wanted to. The first clue that we personally had, here at Haus ZehnKatzen, that it had been was a post on the book of the face that now appears was a share from this FB channel called 'Portlandism':

I am sad to report that Portland street musician and all around nice guy, Kirk Reeves is no longer with us.

To me, Kirk was a staple in Portland. Waving to motorists as they passed by, as well as interacting with the people on the street, it was hard not to smile around him. Kirk brightened my day on many, many occasions and I am sad he is gone.

I remember gathering with friends and meeting Kirk for sandwiches on Thursdays for a few years, he always had a great story to tell.

Rest easy, Kirk Reeves.

But it was rumor at that point and, as I mentioned above, we didn't really want to believe it. We didn't talk much with Kirk, but we ran in the same circles, and just knowing he was out there, struggling along side of us,  made us feel a little less lonely in the world.

Everyone who'd used the westbound approach to the Hawthorne Bridge from Naito Parkway northbound knew of Kirk. He was The Man in the White Suit, the enigma with the Mickey Mouse ears and the ever-playing horn; the street musician who is evergreen, providing the backdrop you expect in a city the size of Portland, the splash of absurd personality that leaves you smiling for reasons you will never put your finger quite on.

Kirk was a regular at OryCon, the science fiction convention The Wife™ and I have been habitués of for never-you-mind how long. We must have first run into him about ten years back. In that white tux and that amazing rock-star style and blazing white teeth, he was hard to miss. 

He had a 'con badge, and it read Kirk the Jerk. In later times he would be Working Kirk, but then, he chose to reference an obscure Trekism. The Wife™, who saw Star Trek: The Animated Series, got the joke immediately. On one episode, titled "The Practical Joker", depicts the hilarity that ensues when an alien intelligence infects the Enterprise's computer after the ship passes through a cloud. The ship begins playing practical jokes on the crew, nearly getting them killed by Romulans, and at one time, the ship played a certain goof on our captain:

Comedy gold,  I tell you. Well, at least I laughed 'till I stopped.

Wife and Kirk got into a pretty deep conversation about that episode and from there, a lovely friendly acquaintance was born. We ourselves would go out of our way to use that on-ramp to the Hawthorne Bridge to say 'hi' and occasionally leave a tip. 

There wasn't anyone who didn't like Kirk, from what I remember. He took the name Kirk the Jerk only as a joke, but jerk was the last thing he could ever be mistaken for being. He wanted to entertain. He was always entertaining to be with. He tried various things to try to make his fame; the street performing, the cable access show; we hear he had several unpublished novels, and even tried to get on America's Got Talent. 

His audition did not get him far. Their loss.

He did have a local show, cable access … it was called Low Comedy. He gave us a DVD to watch and we did and … while I did come here to praise him and not to bury him, it was … well, here's a clip found at YouTube. You be the judge:

For those who like this sort of thing, this should be exactly the sort of thing they like, as they say. Didn't fill my can'o'beer; maybe it'll fill yours.

But that was Kirk, to me. He knew what he wanted to do, and he went for it. He was quite good at the horn-playing, maybe not so much at the comedy thing, but consider – he got a lot of people together and they enjoyed it and they enjoyed his company and he, theirs, so in the end, it's all good.

He had no family in Portland, as far as we knew. A search was undertaken by the Portland Police to find any relatives and they did find a sister. But as tragic as the news was that he was no longer amongst us, even worse was the knowledge that he had taken his own life, ended by his own hand, in a corner of Portland so lonely – Bybee Lake, a shallow wetland which is about as far away from being part of Portland as you can be yet still being a part of Portland – was where Kirk chose to end the pain he felt.

While I wasn't infinitely familiar with Kirk (my loss, there) I am intimately familiar with suicide compulsion issues, having known some very passionate people who are very driven, and take failure just as passionately as they do success. It's hard for anyone who's never been driven that far to understand, still so for me, but the pain can get so great that you'll do anything to make it stop. The sad clown is a staple, a cliché; the entertainer who is smiles on the outside yet dying on the inside. It's one that's rooted in soberest truth though.

But still, I'll always remember him for what he gave me. Though I didn't know him well, the truth that he brought stays with me; the courage to be yourself, to strive for what you want to do, to try and, well, heck … maybe you'll get to where you want to go, but you only have the one life, so go balls-out.

And that Kirk didn't find the success he needed to sustain him … well, maybe he was just ahead of his time, is all. Like so very many of us.

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, Woody Allen is quoted as saying, I want to achieve it by not dying. And who can really disagree with that? Kirk didn't get maybe the immortality that he was shootin' for, but he did get it of a sort. Everything on the Internet is forever, as we all know, and on Google Street View, you can see this:


View Larger Map

That's Kirk, takin' a break y'all. Even the greatest have to rest occasionally.

He was a man; take him for all in all. We shall not see his like again.

[pdx] … And A Transit Bridge Runs Through It: An Editorial Comment

3013.

TriMet has, this week, released the list of the finalists for the name they'll be sticking on the new landmark Portland-Milwaukie Transit Bridge. They are:

1. Wy'East
2. Duniway
3. Cascadia Crossing
4. Tillicum Crossing

The four names stand pretty large in the history of the  Salish lands and the history of the American Pacific Northwest. Wy'East is, of course, the name the original locals gave Mount Hood. Duniway is for Abigail Scott Duniway, the suffragette (who already stands tall with a legacy of a park and a school), tillicum is Chinuk wawa for us folks, our people, our tribe, and Cascadia is the emerging name for our regional identity latterly.

A few problems come to mind with these names. All of them are fairly unoffensive, The first two still manage some inspiration, the last two sound like suburban shopping malls. Very historical, very important, very expected.

The real sad part, personally, for me, is who didn't even make the short list:

Kirk Reeves. To most Portlanders, he should need no introduction, but to those who arrived late in the game, here's a Working Kirk primer for you. Kirk Reeves, the white-suited man at the west end of the Hawthorne Bridge (and betimes other places, busking for a living, making bad comedy shows on local access, appearing as himself every OryCon, and basically making the world better by just being. Kirk Reeves, whose struggle with keeping the wolves at bay grew to be so wearing that he gave in, just a few months over a year ago.

TriMet has published the list of suggestions. I haven't the inclination to count myself, but a subjective peruse of the 202-page list of suggestions seems to indicate a sheer preponderance of Kirk (in some variant spellings). Joseph Rose at Soylent News™remarks that a page count comes up with Kirk's name on about 11 pages of the document; by contrast, Duniway got about four, and Wy'East, two.

So, clearly, this wasn't a popularity contest. 

It does make TriMet seem a little out-of-touch with its constituency though. Wouldn't be the first time that has happened over the last few years, we bittersweetly note, not at all.

It has been pointed out to me that perhaps a sort of wide-screen personality could really only support the idea of a bridge name. As far as that goes, Wy'East or Duniway goes just fine with me. And, as T.A. Barnhart pointed out to me, Kirk's name would fit perhaps a little better as a park name or a place where performers could come out to play. I'd picture that as a Oregonized sort of Speaker's Corner, something we really could rock, in a Portland way. Picture people debating in one part, someone playing a public tune in another, and not one of our local over-promoted, over priced you-have-to-pay-to-get-into-Tom McCall-Waterfront-Park dos, either. 

A people's space? Working Kirk Reeves People's Park? I could get behind that.

But, in the meantime, if TriMet wasn't interested in what the people really wanted, why did it bother to ask at all? If there was no possibility of Kirk's name going on the bridge, at least it could have thrown us a bone by putting it on the short list.

And, in my opinion? I think Kirk was big-screen enough for his name to go on that bridge.

I wonder, would his story have turned out any differently if he'd have known how much affection the community had for him?

I know people might disagree with that, and I'm down with it.

You can download the pdf list here, if you wanna.

[pdx_legends] Working Kirk Reeves - Portland's Patron Saint, Now In Mural Form

3133.

He's part of Portland's landscape now … on a permanent, full-time basis.

When Kirk Reeves passed from us, since two years ago as of November, more than one intersecting PDX artistic community gasped in shock, dismay and despair. I'm sure there are those around us trying to still come to terms with it. I, for one, can't hit the west end of the Hawthorne Bridge going east, either straight on from SW Madison Street or coming up the ramp from northbound Naito Parkway, without looking at that little pavement peninsula he sat on with his horn and his paraphernalia, busking in those absurd-but-oh-so-right white tails, sequined waistcoat, and Mickey Mouse ears, wishing that he could somehow come back and do an encore for a while.

Well, Kirk is back … in a way.

Of course, those of us who knew and loved having Kirk around were hoping for a tribute of some sort. You don't lose that sort of happiness without feeling generally betrayed by the world in general, but having a homage to someone who kept others' spirits so high helps us do what healing we have to do to move on.

We loved Kirk enough that we lobbied to have the Tilikum Crossing named for him; the learned heads on the commission decided on another name despite Working Kirk being the popular choice, because learned heads reasons.

But someone did finally come up with something, and it's smashing, and I fancy that Kirk might have approved. At 430 NE Lloyd Blvd – the corner of Lloyd and NE Grand Avenue … there is a small, plain building that was, for years, home to a business called Rich's Delicatessen. Like almost everything that thrived in the 80s, it's gone now, and the building has been remodeled and refreshed, at least on the outside (the inside remains unfinished, a large expanse of gravel taking up most of the middle of the floor. Oddest thing …).

Thanks to the preternaturally sensitive artist, Gwenn Seemel, there is now a firey-passionate mural on that wall …

The style of the painting, seeming to layer small abstract shapes over colors and making up forms from these shapes, conveys a lot of emotion. It depicts, as closely as possible, the quiet riot that was the passion of Kirk.

The permanent beatific smile, the immense personal warmth one felt when talking with the man … it's all there. The message is there too, and rendered in playful, hand-created type.

It's a thing of despair to see that Kirk now kind of iconically stands out in the city he spent his artistic passion in, but it's a hopeful thing too … the combination of the style, the likeliness gazing warmly out at everyone who may pass that way and the message above, kind of makes me think he's really gazing out there. Makes me think I can go by and say 'hi' and he will, somehow, hear me and listen and somehow respond.

He's a part of the fabric of the city now, a patron saint of all of us aspiring artists who are striving to overcome our own obstacles, made real by an artist with a very deft touch.

… watching over a city where food carts roam the streets between gigs …

… and where streetcar tracks bask in the warmth of a somewhat-too-warm late August Portland gloaming.

Being part of the Orycon family, I'd call him a friend; he had closer friends than I did. But I feel privileged that I knew him at all.

He was one of those people who are like that. The world was simply better that he was around at all; it's a bit lacklustre becase he's not here now, but you know you were lucky just to share the same planet with him, if only for a little while. 

[liff] Odds and Sods #2, 2014

3012.

Before I sign out for the day, cats and kittens, here's a few sweepings from the studio floor.

• Ars Technica has a nifty article on the slow-motion fall of QuarkXPress. I still have a copy of QXP on my hard drive … it's QXP6. I learned layout in QXP3. QXP killed PageMaker, danced all over its grave for several years, and then fell asleep. By the time Quark had woke up with Indy in its rearview, it was too late to build up steam. Now it's the minority platform, though it's hard to tell … reliable figures on market shave haven't been available for a looooong time, however, it's a sign of the times when a poster at a GD forum can soberly ask the question Is QuarkXPress still relevant and it's a calm discussion rather than a white-hot flame-war. Meanwhile, Quark is still selling XPress, and it's up to version 10. Still pretty pricy, but if you're not thrilled with the idea of the Creative Cloud …
• Common sense from FastCompany Design about how not to get screwed by clients. My experience is the real trick is not to let your desperation for work cause you to jump where you ought to have stood pat. What happens is you don't seem professional, you don't act professional … and you stay an amateur. Worst, you jump for jobs and hope to bull your way through until you get on top. This never happens. When your reach exceeds your grasp, it'll slip through your fingers and fall ugly. Trust me here. 
• A nifty-looking art contest. I'm against giving away your art for free, so, with all caution advised, this is a good-looking trifle and probably some fun to get involved with, as long as you're down with all you're going to get out of it is 25 bookmarks and Doodlers Anonymous will send 250 out to people what order their books. 
• NoLo, SoBu, TriBeCa, SoWhoTheHellCares, So what's in a cutesy little nabe name? Burrito Justice, a vibrant SanFran blog with a witty what-the-hell attitude, can tell you about La Lengua.
• It's a $20 Megabuck battle-of-the-type-giants as Hoefler and Frere-Jones duke it out in the squared circle of the courtroom over who owns all those fonts really. When it comes to H and FJ, there is no such thing as a little disagreement. 
• … and you know that TriMet cable-stay transit bridge? We have our name finalists. Not bad, but Kirk Reeves' name didn't make the cut, which has me teh sadd. We'll have to find some other way to honor him, is all.
• … and speaking of cats 'n' kittens, we have the story of what happened when one monk in one scriptorium forgot to close his book. Hey, mousing is hard work, and cat's gotta go somehwere, guise … 

Happy Frigga Day, and always remember to keep your precious documents out of Fluffy's way!

[pdx_legends] KPOJ: The Death of A Radio Station

2890.This last couple of weeks … which I'm starting to think of as Portland's Fortnight of Suck … has taken many bits of wonder and sweetness away.

Losing Jack Ohman to the Sacramento Bee was bad enough, but at least we can read him as a syndicated cartoonist, as bittersweet as that will be. Does it need be said that I'll miss the incredibly fun Sunday stuff he did? Like I said, bittersweet.

Then we lost Kirk Reeves. That bittersweet note became a combo.

Now … KPOJ is pfft gone. Just like that. In a particularly graceless move, Clear Channel Portland, which is no Golden West Broadcasting, and I'll say that with conviction, announced, last Friday, that KPOJ was changing format (being 'flipped', as they say) to all-sports talk as of the following Monday, perhaps because they sensed that Portland was in desperate need of three 24-hour talk radio sports outlets.

The bittersweet combo went to full-effect bittersweet symphony.

I didn't see the need myself, but what do I know of advertising?

So, I log on about 4:20 PM. Somehow find this story at the WWeek announcing the change was two days out. Well. I turn on the radio, tuned to 620, of course, and there's Randi Rhodes as clear as you please.

And then I read the update: just to be whoever it is that they are, they decided to move the changeover to Friday. Which was, at that point in the proceedings, right now.

And, five minute later I was listening to FOX Sports Talk 620.

KPOJ hadn't just been flipped; it'd been taken out behind the back shed and shot, and I just got there in time to see it happen. Old Yeller was dispatched with more compassion.

So, really, if you want liberal talk in Portland … there's nothing. Seriously. Oh, I suppose I could lay out money to have satellite radio, but I'm naïve enough to believe in and remember a time when you didn't have to pay to have your radio (Isn't it odd that Americans would rebel against a BBC-style model but willingly put up with commercials or incur another bill from big bidness?) and news and information wasn't just another profit center.

And while KPOJ wasn't exactly the rockstar it was back in '04, when it started, it sure was solid, and had regular listeners and proud advertisers. All of whom, in the end, meant nothing to Clear Channel.

Well, there is some movement aborning to, if not bring back liberal talk radio to Portland, at least to prove there's a market here for it and that ignoring it would be foolish. The Facebook page Save KPOJ aims to prove there's a constituency, and Kari Chisholm (of BlueOregon) has started a campaign via the SaveKPOJ.com website.

Forlorn hopes at this point? Maybe. But in two days, the Facebook community has over 1,600 likes, and the petition at the website has amassed nearly 5,000 signatures.

It might not bring back KPOJ, at least not right away, but maybe there's a chance here to get in on the forging of a true independent and liberal tradition of news and information in Portland, which, being Portland, ought to have one.

Also you might want to like Carl Wolfson's page on Facebook and follow him on Twitter. Just sayin'.

[pdx_art] Gwenn Seemel: The Legacy of Charlie Hales

3196.

Gwenn Seemel, who did the amazing Kirk Reeves mural on NE Grand Avenue at Lloyd Blvd in the Lloyd District, has her doubts about the legacy of Mayor Charlie Hales.

I find I have the same thoughts, feelings, and impressions. While people like me stew and worry and argue within ourselves and amongst ourselves, she arts it out.

Watch:


The legacy of Mayor Charlie Hales from Gwenn Seemel on Vimeo.

Get a closeup of that picture, go to her blog: http://www.gwennseemel.com/index.php/blog/comments/legacy_charlie_hales/

[pdx] Tri Met Bridge, We Christen Thee … Tilikum Crossing

3060.

… and that's the new name.

The word Tilikum (or Tillicum or, if you want to be really correct about it, TilixƏm) is from the Chinuk Wawa, the inter-tribal trade argot spoken by the people of Cascadia before us white folks got here, and, for a time, by many of the white people who got here. Elements of this jargon are still with us today, as I've pointed out before: if you look up the high mucketymuck or if you buy anything from this surf sports company or wondered about the sasquatch, you're speaking Chinuk, pilgrim. A skookum thing, to be sure.

From the TriMet email

Tilikum, which is the closest we can come in the 26-character common Latinate alphabet to writing the word, is a work in the Wawa meaning person or people or family, depending on the context. It survives, perhaps in a deplacé way, as the name of a neighborhood bar in Beaverton along the BHH; the name is rather appropriate, since the greater family in these modern times still, in this area of the world, is as likely to meet in an Oregon dive bar as anyplace else, perhaps, from my experience, more so.

The use of the stereotypical Indian war bonnet seems awkward but I am, at best, an armchair historian. I'll leave the more thoroughgoing analysis to those who put the word anal in analysis. 

Chinuk Wawa shorthand system
date unclear. Based on Duployan
shorthand. Source.

The name entire seems to read Tilikum Crossing: Bridge of the People. The ultimate clause of that sentence can be seen as a translation, and also a tagline, which makes it sound somewhat more appropriate to an adventure movie poster. It's not my choice, nor is it the preference of many others; many of us, including me, hoped it would be named for Kirk Reeves … indeed, it was the popular choice, as The Oregonian's Joseph Rose reported. In his missive to us in the proletariat, sent under the aegis of TriMet, historian Chet Orloff says:

But ok, I know some of you are disappointed and may be thinking of the new name in terms of winning and losing. However, please be reminded the process was not a competition or popularity contest. It was not about lobbying and who has the most clout.
The naming process was very deliberate. Our committee of 10 citizens asked fellow citizens (you) for input -- first, to provide possible names then, second, to comment on the four most meaningful names the committee believed best met the criteria we had established early in the process.  

The criteria (which can be seen in this TriMet blog posting by Mary Fetsch) were, of nature, subjective (history being what it is, I can't really see how it could be anything but), and can, I think it not untoward to point out, argue for anyone's case as it can be against. I know more than a few people who were holding out for Abigail Scott Duniway, whose name also would have been most worthy.

But it is what it is; if there's any salve to the fact that a name was chosen that I may or may not agree with it is that the search and decision was apparently done in good faith – the committee came up with a set of criteria and have appeared to stick to it as close as they could possibly do.

In that, Tilikum Crossing, in that it is a 'bridge of the people' (certainly any gorgeous cable-stayed bridge in the Transit Capital of the World that carries only foot, rail, and bike traffic and no cars reflects an ideal a lot of us Portlanders hope for) is a goodly name, and one I can make a certain sort of peace with.

The version TilixƏm needs some explaining perhaps: See this Soylent News™ article, also by The Rose, which explains the notation. Sadly, he does not call the upside-down e what it is, which is the schwa, but the article is a solid one nevertheless.

[PDX] Snowy Volcanoes on an OryCon Friday

3243.

OryCon 37, the yearly must-do and the SF con I designed the program books for this year (which I'll talk about perforce) opened today and we went down to get the lay of the place, connect with much confriends, and get copies of my program book.

I was too busy to take photos inside, but let me tell you, the kids are alright, and the adults aren't doing too badly, not neither. The daytime parking … the nearby SmartPark garage offered $15 flat for four hours or more … that's another matter. Weekend parking is going to be a lot more kind, economically speaking.

The view from the 7th floor of the 2nd and Jefferson SmartPark was almost worth the price of parking there. Actually, priceless.

I give you two Portland icons. In the foreground, the Hawthorne Bridge. On the horizon, Mt. Hood, called by our Multnomahn predecessors Wy'east.  You won't be able to see this view forever though, in the next few years, a new and monolithic Multnomah County Courthouse is going up on that block between this POV and the bridge. How, I'm still not certain, but they're promising it's going to happen, much to the Veritable Quandary's dismay.

What is that white stuff on it, you may ask, fellow Oregonian?

Snow. It's snow. We haven't seen it out there in a while. And an ironic moment for me was realized when I remembered that that stop-sign in the middle, at the bottom, where the traffic from northbound Naito Parkway patiently waits for eastbound access to the bridge, is where Working Kirk Reeves did his best work.

Still miss that fellah. Haven't seen that vivacity around here in a long time.

Cropping the photo to more focus on the mountain gives a different feel. More drama. You lose the deck of the bridge but you gain the feeling of a whole other world.

I love Mount Hood.

Of course, when it comes to volcanoes …

… we got 'em coming and going around here. But not quite erupting just now, a kindness that. Saint Helens reminds us we have to keep our eyes open.

They do make for an almost-indescribably-beautiful mountain, though. 

Tilikum Crossing From Terwilliger Blvd

3723This, the full name of which is Tilikum Crossing, Bridge of the People, is the newest and most unique of Portland's signature bridges, a cable-stayed design that opened to the transit- and bicycle-using public in 2015. It is not a general traffic bridge, but is restricted and designed for buses, light rail and streetcar, and bicycle and pedestrian access only. It connects from the west at a point off South Moody Avenue just south of the Riverplace district and ties into the east via a access called SE Tilikum Way which bends to become a block of SE 7th Avenue feeding into SE Division Place. It opened in 2015.

A public naming contest was conducted; Tilikum Crossing wasn't the popular choice but the choice TriMet went with. The popular choice was honoring the legendary street performer "Working" Kirk Reeves, may he long live in our hearts, but that just didn't have the gravitas that they were looking for, we guess. That said, the word tilikum is Chinuk Wawa meaning people in the sense of family or tribe and meant to pay homage to the indigenous inhabitants ... the Multnomahs, the Clackamas, and others who lived here before we white people go there, and if they weren't going to go with the people's choice, at least they went with something with a lot of heart and Native soul.

Interesting Fun Fact!: The bridge, as mentioned earlier, is transit and pedestrian/bike only. So, as you sit comfortably (and properly socially-distanced) in a TriMet motor coach or a MAX train, you can grin smugly at the people crossing in cars just to the north via the Marquam Bridge or to the south on the Ross Island Bridge. Of course, they're too far away to see you; the victory is a Pyrrhic one. It is, never the less, real, and yours.