[pdx] Photos On Sunday: The Burnside Bridgehead

3096.

The block on the north side of the east end of the Burnside Bridge has something of a conflicted history. For a long time, nobody knew what its future would look like. Many people had some definite ideas, but in the end, none of them willed out, in a way that's funny in bike-friendly, liberal, weird Portland.

This block is bounded on the south by East Burnside Street, on the west by NE 3nd Avenue, on the north by NE Couch Street, and on the east by NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, once known as Union Avenue. I became a full-time Portlander in 1985 (with a break from '87-'91, but that's another story) but, by then, being a perhaps-too-avid watcher of the news, had familiarity with at least some of the issues surrounding that square block of Portland.

When I finally did come to the shining city, I knew there was a place of no small notoriety there, and that was sad, because they really did try to fix something. The building on the north side of the bridge was a place that looked disreputable but tried to have a good heart – they called it Baloney Joe's. It was a homeless shelter run by an organization that dissolved in a scandal involving the director, an organization called the Burnside Community Council, and that's sad because there were some good angels hard at work there, some of whom you might know if you hang around the good Portlandians online.

Sometime around 1990, due to the scandal, the BCC ended and Baloney Joe's operation was taken up by the Salvation Army, who renamed it the Recovery Inn, then developers got interested, and the Inn finally closed and moldered for several years while a variety of power and money centers vied for the opportunity to develop it.

Someone wanted to put a Home Depot store there. I, for one, still can't picture it.

Today, the battle has been settled. When whoever thought it was going to be a bonnie idea decided to turn Burnside and Couch into a one-way couplet east and west of the bridge, they needed a place to funnel the west-bound traffic on NE Couch onto the Burnside Bridge westbound. Instead of a Home Depot or lower-income housing or anything regarding the homeless, now, an S-shaped boulevard full of traffic runs through it.

In liberal, weird, transit-and-bike-friendly Portland.

Who says irony is dead? As long as this absurd city remains, thus shall it be. And the debate over what could have been shall 'ere be considered academic.

The skyline of the down, dirty, yet somehow fashionable
CEID looking south from the Burnside Bridge.

The Burnside Bridgehead exists in what was, and still shows many sides of, what we locals called the C.E.I.D – the Central Eastside Industrial District. It's starting to give way to converted loft work/live spaces, trendoid bars, and retail … which, one supposes, was just a matter of time, given that it was in sight of the city core.

The part of the block not given over to the Couch Street connection is carpeted over in long grass and wildflowers. The part of Couch that used to connect SE 3rd Avenue to MLK is now a very short stub which provides convenient and ready parking on a Sunday afternoon to the tyro photographer and his wife, and an opportunity to stretch the legs and look at the urban views.

We all strive for more than just the basics. This is not
Portland, this is universal.

The building on the south side of the bridge at 3rd Avenue has had a sign on it for decades: R.J. Templeton Co. Whatever R.J. Templeton Co, did, it's been gone perhaps even before your humble interlocutor came to town; one remembers the facade mostly bland painted wood where windows must once have been. The windows are back and whatever is going in behind them, you can bet it's going to be pretty spiffy and, no doubt, priced to match.

The area is popular now for skateboarders and bike riders, who have carved their own paths to and from Burnside down to the lower streets. Down closer to the river, along 2nd Avenue, is some of the last 'industrial' businesses in the area; some of Portland's oldest produce merchants are still there, a remnant of what was once so many that they named the area Produce Row. Set deep within the industrial haven, it took advantage of the quick freeway connections and rail access to be a break-in-bulk point for the fruits and veggies coming into and out of Portland.

The era is closing out so very slowly though. We do things in our own time here in Portland, and this is on a timetable of its own. Farther down 2nd, under the Burnside Bridge itself, is a skatepark that went from outlaw to legitimate. We saw murals (which I'll go back and get sometime) and people getting ready, complete with cameras for posterity's sake. We indeed have come so far.

The path from E Burnside down to NE 3rd Avenue.
You can go your own way, baby.
The building in the distance is the Eastside Exchange,
the building addressed with the No.123
rubric seen earlier in this post.

They say that weeds are wildflowers out of place.
Like the homeless people that used to shelter here, they'll
be evicted in their turn, perhaps. 

Looking under the bridge at SE 3rd Avenue from NE 3rd Avenue.

Today, the old gives way to the new, a streetcar runs where once traffic did, and it all looks kind of the same, but something more than the obvious seems to have moved on. But this is Oregon, and that means …

… we'll always have the blackberry bushes.

ON EDIT: Fellow PDX Facebooker and curator of the Dead Memories Portland group, Michael Long, shares the news that they are going to put something in more than just a road there … and the idea is so very, very us. It's a real dumbbell …

[Address_Nerd] New Portland Street Blades Evolve, and More Clearview Type

2306.We haven't had the chance to go on sign safari for a long time, the only explanation being It's Complicated. But we finally have bagged some big game, and I'm actually delighted to say that the design of the next generation of Portland street blades is evolving in attractive and designerly ways that can only imbue the heart of an Address Nerd with glee.

I first saw this example of design at the corner of E Burnside and SE 103rd Avenue, in the Russellville area of outer eastside Portland. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first chance I got to actually snap a picture is here, and E Burnside and NE 68th Avenue, which is just down from the brow of the hill where you shunt off Burnside via SE Gilham Avenue to get to Thorburn Street and downtown Montavilla:

This blade is on the south side of E Burnside; the blade reads NE 68th Av because the street only extends north of Burnside at that point. A close look at both blades reveals a designerly concept known as hierarchy at work:

Note the directional and the generic are the same size and weight. The specific ("Burnside") stands out; if you're glancing at any speed, you'll take in that you're on Burnside in a flash.

Same as the named-blade, the numbered blade shows the same sense of hierarchy. Note also that on both blades the baseline is shared between the big letterforms and the small letterforms – and the ordinal, the "th" on 68th, now is rid of the awkward capital letter we saw on the sign at SE 47th and Hawthorne Blvd. Compare:

Also, the letterspacing overall is exactly what it should be – everything lives comfortably on the blade, nothing's crowding yet everything has room to breath. Likey? You bet! Notice also the lack of a white margin all around. I liked the white margin at first, but the lack of same is actually an improvement.

I'm really starting to hope the blades are evolving in that direction.

Also sighted: This set at NE 42nd and Halsey, directly across from the TriMet Hollywood Transit Center/MAX station, and on the same block as the Hollywood Trader Joe's Market:

We now have a very clear idea of how the blade sets will look when mounted as a corner assembly. Particularly attractive is the way the block face number now lives comfortably in the area above the street generic abbreviation – on the previous blade versions the block number sat in the upper left corner, awkwardly and a bit uncomfortably – as above, the letterspacing and leading is immaculate and exactly appropriate.

It's not just the street blades that are getting the Clearview treatment. Directional signs that have sprung up around the Hollywood business district also use it. Here's one directly adjacent to the above blades:

That's Clearview there, spelling out the name Tillamook St. The harm to letterspacing for letterforms this big is pair-to-pair kerning, and I can find little fault with the job done here. Someone's really paying strict attention, and bravo!

Another thing you'll find in the Hollywood district is new signs directing you to the Banfield Freeway from the north side. These too are in Clearview, but the font is all caps (words like EAST, WEST, above the I-84 shield on the overhead signs coming down from Sandy Blvd) so it might not be immediately evident, but the trained eye will see. I was unable to get a snap this time around, but we'll return there maybe soon.

Finally to cap all this off, is the place I first saw the new evolution. SE 103rd Avenue and East Burnside anchor a new development which is part of the old Russellville nabe. You have to be going eastbound on Burnside to see this. as east of East 99th Avenue, you have the MAX making this old road a necessarily divided highway, but as can probably be seen from the eastbound E 102nd Avenue MAX platform, is this:

Naturally, that caught my attention immeds, for being both the same and different from the street blades we've been assaying for the past half year (or longer?). Here's the one for 103rd Avenue:

And here's the one for E. Burnside Street. Nota Bene the block face in the upper right corner here: it's the numeral 1.

Burnside Street, as nobody needs be told, is the address baseline; going east and west from the Willamette River's origin, the lowest possible addresses on crossing avenues will be found here, and the block index is the lowest address possible on the block you're leaving (or entering, depending on the direction of travel). We note that the blade for Burnside at NE 68th Ave actually has no block index, and my guess is that since it's on the south side of the street and 68th does not have a block at that point, you wont be leaving or entering any block at that point (at least without major damage to your car, major dismay on the part of a property owner, and a significant divot in the side of Mount Tabor). By this logic, I'd expect the blade on the north side of NE 68th and E Burnside to have a "1" on the corner of the Burnside blade – when it does finally go up, of course.

A particularly good day to be an Address Nerd, as well as a typographer. We feel fulfilled.

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