The Auto Graveyard of Glisan St

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The address appears to be 9025 NE Glisan St. It seems to be something of a boneyard, though a very small one.

I'm not any sort of authority on cars this old. They look like they are from the 1940s, or maybe 1930s. They look like gangster cars. Al Capone would be riding in one of these sweet rides, when he was alive and they were new.

What the owner of the property does with them, or how they're acquired and why they stay here or so very long (these old cars come and go from this lot and have, according to my memory, for years, a decade and longer) is a complete mystery to me. 

That they have done so for so long, in constant state, is a delight just as quirky and mysterious.

Anyone wanting to pass by themselves? This is just west of the I-205 offramp to NE Glisan, on the north side of the street, at the top of the slope. The appropriately-named Top Of The Hill Tavern is across the street from there.

The Long View West Down Glisan From NE 89th

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There's a wonderful fable about how Portland's geography sports a 'flat' east side, a more level landscape than can be found west of the river.

That's complete bull, of course. There are remarkable hills on the east side of the Willamette offering low-key splendid views (I'm not just talking about Mount Tabor or Rocky Butte). There's the Alameda Ridge, stretches of Stark Street, a long length of Sandy Boulevard. Portland's east side is remarkably bumpy for a flat place, and the person who first started talking about 'Portland's flat east side' is was probably a cyclist with calves of titanium, you know the kind.

NE Glisan east of I-205 is fairly level, but as soon as you get to about 89th to 92nd Avenues, it drops. There's a long lovely slope alongside Multnomah University (actually a modestly-sized bible college) and it offers this long-range view.

In the distance there are, of course, the West Hills ... west of the Willamette. Here, we're approximately four and a half miles east of the Willamette. The stretch of Glisan we can see here is somewhat more than a mile. 

Portland is a city of hills. Many of them hide their light under a bushel though.

We'll Always Have Northeast Glisan

3726Not to get into too much profundity about it, but the pandemic has made us re-think the idea of the burger-restaurant dining experience sans lobby.

We do miss those things in general, the former 122nd and Glisan Burgerville notwithstanding. But when we do get BV, the question highest on our minds is, of course, where do we go to enjoy it?

This last weekend we had come out of Gresham and had gotten our burgers at the BV at 162nd and Division. Brown Eyed Girl at the conn, we proceeded north on 162nd and then west on NE Glisan St. I had no clue. She has learned her geographical lessons well, however, and knows where to get an unexpected viewpoint.

Portland's 'flat east side' is something of a myth. We just don't have a junior mountain range like the west side does; there's plenty of hills, slopes, dropoffs, defiles, what have you. And just as you past the entry to the legendary Glendoveer Golf Course, just west of 148th on Glisan, the road drops and you get kind of a nifty urban view, and that's where we parked and ate (it's Walla Walla Sweet onion-ring season, for those who care ... they were superb, of course) and contemplated life.

At sunset. Which also made it kind of poetic.

There isn't a thing in that shot that doesn't mean something to us: from the slabby width of Glisan to the radio towers on the ridge of the West Hills, some fifteen miles away.

AND NOW, IN BOKEH!!!

... which was kind of accidental, because the camera wasn't sure what to focus on, but the blur and the view please us so much that we'll pretend we meant to do that.