[print] It's Always Tuesday In The New Fun Size™ Oregonian

3123.

Changing calendars is nothing new, of course. The Julian calendar was upgraded to the Gregorian calendar, an in Ethiopia, they use a version of the calendar that includes leap days once every four years regardless (instead of omitting it in years evenly divisible by 400, as we do), resulting in the oddity (to us, anyway), that New Years Day, 2000, didn't happen for residents of Addis Abebe until September 11th, 2007. It is currently 2007 by the Ge'ez calendar.

However, in the West, we still keep to the Gregorian calendar, but here in the Beaver State, we've upgraded again … to The Oregonian Calendar.

It was revealed to us during our usual visit to the library. The Wife™goes through the week's Fun Size™ Oregonians which, as I've mentioned before, we never seem to have trouble getting, and she's frustrated, wondering where last Wednesday's paper was.

At last she lays it out day-by-day.

Oh, wait, what's this then?

Now, on my calendar, things don't run that way.

As our friend, the vintage Casio PV-S400 Pocket Viewer PDA will tell you, Monday the 21s is followed by Tuesday … the 22nd. The 23rd isn't supposed to come until Wendesday. 

Unless …

They've decided to upgrade our very calendar? Could that be? I mean, the modern The Oregonian is working hard to redefine our very idea of a newspaper as something to be read. Why not? But this isn't a calendar upgrade so much as a modern calendar levelling up, introducing new days in new sequences, without warning to the general population.

Kind of like reality until you find a Konami cheat for it.

But more research is called for. Stabilizing the test subject on the examining table, the patient is opened to examine the interior makeup … and IT'S STILL TUESDAY …

No need to panic. It was Tuesday, the 22nd, all along … they just hid it inside.

Of course, now Tuesday the 23rd follows Tuesday the 22nd. Mayhap Tuesday the 24th, after that, Tuesday the 25th, ad nauseam …  it's always Tuesday in Portland now. 

And it just stands to reason.

Tuesday is, after all, Soylent News™ day. 

[pdx_photos] Downtown Portland at Sunset

3011.

Posted because I found them in my photo 'stash. I love downtown Portland as the sun goes down. Always has been thus; pretty, shimmery, glimmery, ephemeral. Never more than recently.

All copyright me. Don't steal 'em, okay? If you want a copy, contact me for terms.

[logo] Lloyd Llogo: The Most Portlandest Of Malls Gets A New Graphic Llook

2961.Portland's Mall is re-imagining itself.

The Lloyd Center is pretty much the point of entry of the Mall into the culture of Oregon. Built in 1960, once opened, Oregon shopping joined the national scene in as much as the modern shopping mall is concerned.

It's had its ups and downs; it went from a 100-store mall with an open courtyard to a completely-enclosed mall with two levels of shopping and one of offices. It's really going strong, and considering how some malls have died, are dying, or have re-imagined their own selves into sere multi-acre parking lots surrounded by big boxes, that's no small feat.

For many years, now, its logo looked like this:

… and this wasn't too bad. The rose-as-an-O was very appropriate design, and I always thought the type was rather restrained and refined.

The center has undergone a change of ownership, and the new owners have deemed a logo refresh is in order. Delving back into its 60s-past, here's what they came up with:

A report by KATU-Channel 2 relates that the new owners feel as though the design harkens back to the Center's original 'retro charm'. I can see this. The design would tessellate very nicely into one of those latticework dividers so popular in the hip, upscale pads of the 60s.

I must admit, it didn't take off with me right away. I didn't much care for the asymmetry, though once I pictured it as a wall texture, it clicked right there and then. It was a quirky inspiration, to be sure, that caused the designer to link three of the open circles with the L, leaving the one bolded into a C to stand outside, but after sifting the design in my head for a while, it works.

At least it does succeed in evoking a retro feel, and as far as that goes, it's a success.

[pdx_liff] The Bits Of PDX Broadcast History You'll Find In Hawthorne Junk Shops

2783We are now the proud owners of a sign. But this is not just any old sign.

Portland's Channel 2, KATU-TV, signed on in 1962. It became an ABC affiliate in 1963.
The wooden shadowbox backing up this bit of translucent plexi (or Lucite, maybe) denotes it as having a vintage of 1958, though that's when Fisher Broadcasting (then Fisher's Blend Station, Inc) received a construction permit for KATU. Don't know if they knew that was when they were going to get the network affiliation. The provenance for the objet is still rather shrouded in the mists of time.

The sign looks like thus:

The translucent plastic sign can be slid out because of the missing bit of metal frame on the right. A small 40-watt appliance bulb lives in the box and looks about as old as the rest of the sign. The crafting and cutting out of the plastic forms used to create the logo's forms is as precise and immaculate as you'd want to see. This was a labor of love.

This appears to be a sign that could have hung in an office window or been mounted on a wall somewhere. How this might have occurred is far from evident. The only idea of provenance we have is the sticker, whose date must be held in some doubt. However, the design of the sign looks identical to the logo design on the television cameras I've seen in historic shots of it. It might not actually date from 1958, but it could easily have dated from around 1963 or so.

The station, KATU, is owned by Fisher Communications. Back in The Day™, it was known as Fisher's Blend Station, Inc. Kind of an awkward name for a media conglomerate. As I understand Fisher's history, though, the company that evolved into Fisher Communications began life as the Fisher Flouring Mills in Seattle, circa 1910 or so. Their most popular product was Fisher's Blend Flour. If you had a Fisher's Scone … a yummy little number made of a piping hot biscuit made of Fisher's flour with warm jam spread inside … at any Pacific Northwest State Fair through the sixties and/or seventies, then that was from the same company. And, early on, Fisher's Flouring Mills apparently realized the value of broadcasting in spreading the word about their signature product … Fisher's Blend Flour …via the new medium. One thing probably led to another, and the next thing you knew, Fisher's Blend was a broadcasting company too.

Fisher Communications have come a long way from their flouring beginnings. Fisher's flour is still made and Fisher Fair Scones are still served, but they do not seem to have a connection to the communications company any more. C'est la guerre, mon cher. 

On the way home there was some discussion over where it might go. Being broadcast graphic design, I felt very possessive about it and thought about some way it could come to the basement to live in the studio with me. But The Wife™ made an excellent gestalt case for it living upstairs in the living room, where everyone we'd have over might see it. And we'd get a chance to brag, of course, thought I to myself, thought I.

So it now occupies a position of honor in the main room upstairs, less than three feet from the TV screen, on which we watch KATU (well, as long as the digital signal will let us). And, in the dark, why, it looks so very warm and nostalgic …

Warms my heart to have this under my own roof, it does. I am a lucky person, in a way.

While I was writing this, The Wife™ sent me a link to a picture of DX reception of KATU from about 770 miles distance. The newsman in depiction is Rick Meyers, a newscaster I liked quite much, when I was a little tiny guy: http://www.johninmontana.com/oregon/katu-id.jpg.


And, as long as Shadowhouse's loss is my gain, might I suggest that you all keep an eye on http://www.shadowhouse.net, Shadowhouse's web page. They still got great stuff there, it's almost all half-off to reduce the wear and tear of moving it, and when they get a new location, that's where you'll find out about it. 

[pdx] I Now Have A Tom Peterson Watch. It Is Overflowing With Win.

2303.I have, over the course of this chronicle, demonstrated at  a perennial affection for things Tom Peterson.

I really can't explain it. Maybe I just regret missing out. Despite living in Portland for a very long time now and being an Oregon native I never managed to make it over there, and Tom sure did define late-night kitschy advertising for Channel 12 (KPTV).

I've longed for examples of TP giveaway kitsch that I could call my very own. The big, smiling face of Tom is, as I've pointed out; iconic – it graced walls in PDX for many a year as a guerrilla stencil, and even made it into a comic book. But the real thing about having a bit of TP is the giveaways – the alarm clock, the coffee mug, the wristwatch.

Well, it's my thrilled whilst humble opportunity to announce to the world that, when it comes to a Tom Peterson watch – I haz it:

The Tom Peterson Watch. It tells you the time. It doesn't tell you the date; it doesn't have to. It won't chime on the hour – it doesn't need to show off.

What about alarms?

Where we're going … we don't need alarms.

It tells you what time it is, bucko. If you can't handle the rest, then, sorry, you just aren't good enough for the Tom Peterson watch. It has so much win, the Yes watch (which I still lust for) bows down with respect – and not just a little awe.

Because no matter what watch you have and what it does or doesn't do, it sure-as-shootin' don't do it with the incomparable style that the Tom Peterson visage rather naturally imbues to the process.

Now in all seriousness, the above may sound off with a studied irony but I really am thrilled and happy to have this watch. I actually do have a deep affection for Petersoniana, it's entirely sincere, and one of my dreams has been to own this watch (or at least a Tom'n'Gloria version), and I have one now, for real and for sure and I'm going to have some fun with it.

The story behind getting it is a rather touching one, actually, and I'll try to tell it respectfully. Very recently, a very sweet woman out in Clackamas lost her loved one. And that fellow owned this watch. Working out what to do with it, she Googled about the watch and found my blog postings about it, and finding that I was the sort of person who would value it for the awesomeness it contained, asked if I would wish to have it, and naturally I said that I would.

So, this started out as Charlie's watch. When Lorraine met me and The Wife™, she opined that I looked like the kind of person who would want to wear such a watch, which, for me, stands as a very high compliment.

It comes with something of an obligation. I'd like to take this watch on an adventure, but I don't quite know what sort of adventure to go on; with meagre means, our adventures don't range too far. But I'll figure out something, because I owe a debt of gratitude, if nothing else, for Lorraine's being so excellent. But there is one thing that me and Charlie had in common, sorta-kinda … he was a musician, and I aspire to be one, even if occasionally and with the bass guitar. So, maybe that's a point of departure there.

I'll keep everyone posted, of course. And, Lorraine, if you Google or drop by here … the watch works like a charm. It's one sweet timepiece, I'll tell you that sincerely.

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