An Antique Portland 7-Up Sign Re-Emerges

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During the off time I got during my birthday-time, we did some driving around. I got a few things. Great used books from Backstory on Hawthorne. Long-desired classic Firesign Theatre albums at Everyday Music on Sandy. And in the process we drove down Sandy rounding the bend onto Couch.

There's a building there that is adjacent to and was once a working part of the Portland Bottling Company. Its got some vague art-deco-ness to it in the port-hole like windows and the great panoramic glass on the corner of 14th and Couch with rounded corners. For the past decade or so it was home of Natian Brewing.

The pinnacle of the building held a revolving 7-Up sign. Since Portland Bottling vacated the space, it's had various advertising signs covering the old logo. 

Those are down now, and we can see a hint of the glory it once had. 

The bottle on top, which was a 7-Up at one time, is still dressed as a Guayaki Organic Yerba Mate Bottle. 

It was this way earlier this week and is still that way now, presumably, if one were inclined to go look. North side of NE Couch just west of NE 14th. Yours for the finding.

Out 122nd Way: Tonkin, For The Love Of Vintage Signs

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Well, be honest, I've posted Ron Tonkin's sign before. But boy, how I love that edifice.

This is what it looked like today. A tiny little bit of the past proudly defying the march of time.

It's scarcely changed in the five-or-so years it's been up in front of Ron Tonkin's old place.

122nd belonged to the Tonkin family, in a way; Ron's brother Marv had the spot at NE 122nd and Halsey that's Courtesy Ford today; it had a distinctive architecture with roof supports that reminded one of the towers on the Saint Johns Bridge, in a reductionist-abstract sort of way (a photo of that plus stationery showing the design's use as a logo can be seen at this page: http://www.thecoralsnake.com/Tonkin). And it was the Tonkins' coinage in ads that supply the tag for this and commonly-themed posts here as well as how I think of my favorite road: Out 122nd Way, as they said.

Marv Tonkin also gave us a jingle that rings in the heads of Portlanders of A Certain Age (Keep honkin'/For Marv Tonkin/That's Maaarv Ton-kin Ford!) which remains memorable decades after Marv went out of business.

Ron sold Chevies, and Marv sold Fords. I'll bet family gatherings had a certain quality betimes.

But, Ron Tonkin remains and stands proud along 122nd between Burnside and Glisan, where it always was and, through evolution in automobile technology as we move toward the terminal phase of the internal combustion engine, likely always will be; a true Portland cultural artifact, one foot in the present, and one foot solidly in the past.

I'll always have time to snap a picture of this.

[pdx] Downtown Chevytown, Portland, USA

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That little portion of the inner eastside of Portland that I gave a glimpse of in the last article has a heavy accent of the way all of eastern Portland used to feel, back in the day, and the area still hasn't exhumed the last of that feeling. It emanates because the terrior is, in some subliminal way, preserved. I feel it in the concrete and the sidewalk; in the fact that Andy and Bax is still a Portland thing; the Mediterranean restaurant next to that is still going great guns, and there's still a Wentworth Chevrolet.

courtesy Michael Long on Facebook

In the two-square-block bit of inner SE Portland encompassed by SE Ankeny and Ash Streets, stretching from SE MLK Jr Blvd to SE 6th Avenue, the western one-and-a-half blocks is occupied by the dealership that once fully reveled in the title Wentworth Chevytown. Up until 2013, there was a great and beloved sign over the lot at the corner of MLK and Ash, about four stories tall, with 10-foot-tall red letters reading WENTWORTH CHEVYTOWN. Alas, the dealership, apparently beleaguered by regulation (mostly, they say, having to do with safety regulations pertaining to the high-voltage power lines on Grand Avenue directly in front of the sign) that prevented regular maintenance, deemed it should come down. The Oregonian's Eliot Njus reported the details back in 2013.

Sic transit gloria, and all that. This writing is in 2017, of course, and what changes five years, yes? But Wentworth still abides; there is a Wentworth Subaru (Subaru because Portland) on the block north of that, East Burnside between MLK and Grand, and on the corner of SE Ankeny and Grand, at 134 SE Grand Avenue, the Chevytown mark can still be seen, in appropriate vintage signage.

It is, at least stylish and retro, which doesn't get you as far as it used to get you here in the Rose City, but is still good for something.

The lot in front is another blast from the past, an OK used car lot. These used to be seen pretty much everywhere, and I don't know if OK is still an operant badge for Chevy, but what it was, as Hemmings reports with a bittersweet tone, was Chev's brand for its dealership-sold used cars. And the signs still adorn the block of Grand between Ankeny and Ash.

It gives a certain cadence to the street scene which I greatly enjoy. There was a time when brand and marketing was just kind of a background wallpaper that didn't blare out and cover everything; this reminds me of that.

[pdx] Classic Neon, 20th and East Burnside, Portland

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Last posting was a long look down East Burnside from NE 20th Avenue. Here's what I stopped to pict, though:

Super cool, and look really nifty late at night, QED, as they say.

The two buildings are on opposite corners of East Burnside Street and NE 20th Avenue. And they've been there for a long time, a very long time. Of the two, the one with more vintage is the Tip Top Cleaners' sign, which shows its age most proudly. The words are in two horizontal bars, with a bending arrow running through them, going from absolutely vertical to pointing at the front door, as those signs used to do. It has no animated effects, but I'll bet at one time that arrow was a running animated series.

Also, it's delightfully multicolored.

The other one, above and to the right, belongs to the Willoughby Hearing aid center concern on the NW corner. It's only one color, the bright red, late at night; the sign sprouts as a semi-futuristic and minimalist layerd trilon from the building's corner.

What it misses in vintageness it more than makes up for in MadMen-style coolness and simplcity. If the Tip Top's sign was the art-deco dude in shiny-lapelled tux and tails, the Willoughby sign is the Rat-Packer, cool in his slender-cut black suit and his skinny tie.

The visual loveliness isn't only limited to the neon on this corner. The window to Tip Top, here lensed by The Wife™, is very sensitive to not only its vintage, but it's sense of Portland place.

That fat type on the bottom and the art-deco flair framing the mountain? Awesome. 

[Out122ndWay] The Sign At Powell Villa

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Out 122nd Way we do kind of fancy that we safekeep the pre-Portlandia Portland (not that I dislike them or anything like that, but they do get a bit smug about reinventing the city). And two of those things are pre-sign code signs. There's one on NE 122nd Avenue in front of the legendary Ron Tonkin dealership. And there's this one.

Powell Villa is a shopping center from back in the day that's still operating. Of course, the anchor grocery store, whatever it was, hove out some years back; there's an Oregon Department of Human Services office filling that space. There's a few small business in an outbuilding on the NW corner of the property. Our favorite Ace Hardware store is there (Love Powell Villa Ace, and they love us back). There's a billiards hall. There's a Baskin Robbins. There's a 7-Eleven (one of the new ones). And there's this sign.

Standing tall and holding court over the landscape just south of SE Powell Blvd on SE 122nd, it seems to defy time. It's very well-kept … the neon isn't often out, and when it is, it's not out for long. It's charming and friendly and reminds one of the time when east county was still east county.

Squint a bit, and you can almost fantasize about the less-gentrified time that it was attached to. Most of the business around this intersection seem a bit careworn by todays bright'n'shiny standards … there's a dive bar or two, a clearance shop that still selling VHS tapes (a dollar a toss) and a veterans thrift store that looks like it was upthrust about the same time as the Boring Volcanics erupted (it even has the big U sign that tells firefighters don't go in here if it's burning.

I dread, as most of us out here might, I imagine, that the hounds of gentrification and condo-bunker building might eventually come out that way. Until they do, it's a nice area full of good people who are doing what they can to get by. And doing fine by that, thank you.

And we even have a pole star to guide us.