Storm Clouds over Foster Road, December 2019.

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Looking through my personal photo stock for picture approximating the mood. This was taken outside Speedboat Coffee on SE Foster Road, looking west. The looming upper cloud boundary and the way the dark velvet sky gradated into the light twilight blue made the whole scene click together in a memorable way.

[liff] Tele-faux-to Beauty

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One more stop along the intersection of Foster and Holgate for now, then we move on.

I just have the one digital camera. It's a Canon PowerShot S100 provided by a most beneficent friend who has my f-stop number. It's a step up from the Kodak that we had before it, which is still good … but this's better. Fun effects, things to play with … better zooms than the old plastic fantastic, the ViviCam 3705, which still does home duty.

Every device has its place, and we don't throw things away because they get old. The old cameras are still doing just like they always did, though the 3705 seems to have developed a disease that has made it even more hungry for battteries, which is strange, because it's an inanimate object. Or … is it?

Point is, being limited with ones equipment makes one push the one they have to the utmost. With the power of the Canon's zoom and the various effects and a talent I seem to have for composition and finding interesting perspective lines, it wasn't long before I was exploring. I've done this before. I found out that if I chose the right sight line and framed and zoomed just so, the effect I got was much like I remember telephoto pictures, and since I'm faking it, I call it my own word: telefauxto. Pronounced the same. And I like the effects just the same.

First, looking down Foster Road, from the series of shots posted yesterday. The line of electrical poles have a rhythm, logic and meter of their own, and form a skeleton nailing down the landscape you can see behind it. And, partially shorn of context, make a poetry of its own.

When I look down a side street, zoom and crop just so, a different perspective imposes itself and becomes the star of the piece. This is saturated with a mood and presence that remind me of a great many Southeast Portland side streets.

This one doesn't use a high-angle perspective but it does go with a contextless approach to generate a sort of introspective mood of its own. Wires, poles, insulators, and transformers against a turbulent sky. The shapes defined by the colors, values, and straight lines can lead to other worlds, if the eyes linger long enough.

Reality is real, but reality is also what you put in, and what you leave out.

[pdx] Tele-faux-to View, SE Foster Road

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Northeast Portland has Sandy Boulevard; Southeast has Foster Road. Two great diagonal boulevards which cut across blocks making interesting shapes and enabling any enterprising commuter to make right triangles at will if they are so inclined.

East side's hypoteneuses. Hypotenusae?

Here's two tele-faux-to views … this one, looking east-southeast …

The greenspace on the left is Laurelwood Park, and it's in the sharp gore-point of Foster and Holgate. And, in a city that seems to be gentrifying before our eyes and becoming shiny and sterile, Foster Road seems fine in not putting on any airs at all. And this is why, of the streets of the inner east side, Foster Road is still one of my most beloved places.

Note the building on the right there? It says K&B over the front entry; and undoubtedly something happens somehow in it, but I'm not sure what. Just being what it is, its old working-class self, doing whatever it does, and not (so far) in a hurry to become tidy, neat, and sterile.

And then there's this view, west-northwest:

… modest, a little dusty, real, and it is what it is. There are some newer, posher places up that way, but there are some small striving places too. And notice, too, it's not an actual straight diagonal; it zigs and zags a bit, turning a little north there, and then in the distance, as you pass George Morlan Plumbing, bending a little the other way again. Of course, on a map, the bends aren't that obvious, but they do have a habit of making a terribly interesting road just that much more interesting.

Old eastside Portland still lingers, to a degree, on SE Foster Road. And we love that.

[pdx] Foster Holgate Tango Foxtrot

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In Southeast Portland, the two charming trafficways, the mighty SE Foster Road and the more modest but still dear SE Holgate Blvd, meet at a rather severe angle; Holgate runs cardinal east t'west, and Foster is one of our two great eastside diagonals. And in that corner is, this exuberant building.

The building is actually home to three businesses. Over there on the far right is SharedSpace, the studio where Jake and Barry (and a few others) work and do wonderful stuff. In the middle is a cute little old-fashioned barbershop (at least it looks that way; those who know me know that with barbershops I have little truck (nothing personal)). But that splash of color?

That's an Argentine-style tango studio where you can really get lessons and such. They call it Tango Berretín.  Tango got popular again maybe a decade ago, and faded; but Tango Berretín is still kicking in high style, so they must be doing something right.

This mighty intersection is where three streets actually come together; the aforementioned Foster and Holgate, and SE 67th Avenue. Above is the picture of the building along the 67th side, and below, of course, is the gusset point. The view faces NE.

 

I'll cop to something here; there's a "Vivid Color" setting on my trusty Canon PowerShot, and it seemed unfair to photograph this delightfully over-the-top, unafraid décor in anything else. And it really made the cloudy sky dramatic, which I visually enjoy.

An eclectic corner like this kind of proves with all the ambivalence about the way Portland's growing, there are still corners of town that haven't forgotten how to weird, Portland-style.