Another Sort of Portland Loo

3935

Some years ago, the City engineered a public bathroom solution called the "Portland Loo" which is a built thing and can be seen across the city in some parks and in the Old Town area of inner NW Portland.

There is, though, another sort of Portland loo, and it's much more portable.

It's much more forthright about the reason it's there, too.

IMSO, this City has stumbled on a number of issues over the last several years. This, however, is not one of them. This is a positive public good and extraordinarily humane, and, sometimes, just the thing you need when you need it.

The Dinosaur Of Maywood Park Is Wise In The Ways Of Mask

3716At the corner of NE 102nd Avenue and Failing Street, on the side of NE 102nd that is actually outside of Portland and inside the small, triangle-shaped City of Maywood Park, there is a house and that house has a multicolored fence made of those slatted window blinds and behind it, there's a bonsai T. Rex, in skeletal form.

You can see it in the below, head above the blue and rose colored ones, and right in front of the chimney.

And maybe it's because the dino has seen some stuff, but they wear that mask with a certain dash.

Take it from someone who knows from extinction.

Wear your damn' mask, Portland.

[liff] A Madeleine Moment, A Block From Powell's Books

3258.

I'm not, emphatically, one to take pictures of my food and post it on line, but for this, I make an exception.

There is a branch of Peet's Coffee on NW Couch Street Between 11th and 12th Avenues, in the place  that used to be Blitz Weinhard's brewery, and they do have the loveliest salted caramel latte. And they had madeleines!

This is what reading Proust does to one. So be it.

The biscuits of interest, with accomplice.

So, we have madeleine moments, just not as profound as Marcel's. The madeleines come three to a package and while they're locally baked, if you leave a madeleine out, it's this little cakey thing, and it'll go stale, and that'd be a shame. And while it's not as profound as Marcel's, the taste of the cream at the top coated with the salted caramel covering the end of the madeleine you've dipped thereinto gives you an idea of where a gourmet's palate might go when its owner dies.

And just down the street, Powell's City of Books … so it's not only delicious, it's painfully Portland on more than one level.

[liff] Our Certified Piece of Portland

3105.

Now, as I've often (and smugly) boasted, I'm a native Oregonian. A downright Oregon chauvinist, I'll admit it. Not only is Oregon pretty much the best place ever, anything Oregonian is the best thing ever; our successes are mighty as our failures spectacular.

But one thing I cannot claim to have been is to have been born in Portland. I have lived in Portland more than half my life now, but I was born in Silverton (which, these days, Silverton being what it has become, is also a point of pride now … but still). If there was one thing I'd change about my life, that'd be it.

That, and I hate my nose. Place of birth, nose … just about covers it.

Anyways, back about 1992 or 1993, the people running Pioneer Courthouse Square opened the Square up again for those who wanted bricks. In 1984 I lived between Salem and Corvallis, and was a broke-ass young guy, so no brick for me! But now, me and The Wife™ had our chance. I can't remember now how much it cost to get one; you can still get one now, and it'll cost you a C-note, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't that expensive at that time.

But we got the money we needed at the time, and we got us that brick. So, there we are.

The only problem we have with it is finding it, or at least, usually so. It's about
3/4ths of the way up SW Yamhill from 6th Avenue, along the part of the block designated the Pioneer Square South MAX platform. We always go there and have a heck of a time finding it; I always start too far toward the middle of the block, based on a memory, and my memory has never been any great shakes. This travail is compounded by the fact that despite an extensive online database, The Square has never indexed the bricks along the Morrison and Yamhill sides (we've e-mailed The Square about it. Nice lady named Lindsay Clute said she'd look into this. More on this as it becomes necessary).

But, as I've intimated, we've found it. Again. And, as much as a experiential thing to write about as a public bookmark, here's where it is … referring to the photo of the PS South station sign as a guide: there is a brick seam proceeding more or less from the middle of the sign post. Going west parallel to Yamhill Street, count six bricks. Then, from that line, count three out.

And there you are. On the above snap, the yellow coffee mug we scored from KGW's Studio on the Square is right beside it. And close-up, it looks like this:

SAMUEL & BRENDA KLEIN 5 YRS, is how it reads. 

1995 was our 5th year together as a couple. We invested in a piece of our beloved town; we are yours, Portland, just like you are ours. 

[pdx] The Square, and The Courthouse That Gives It Its Name

3104.

If you were here 32 years ago, you could have parked here.

Prior to 2014, the downtown Portland block bounded by SW 6th Avenue, Yamhill and Morrison Streets, and SW Broadway was more than a parking lot, it was a parking garage. Doubtless there are a few now that would it back that way, but, fortunately, those few know better and keep their mouths shut about it.

Portland's Living Room, they call it. It's a good nickname for what has become, in the incorrect nomenclature of the peoples, Pioneer Square. 

It's Pioneer Courthouse Square. And born of unsure beginnings in the early 80s, it was the beginning of Portland as a modern-day version of that Livable City on the Hill, shining as an example to all. It has become world-famous, and has become an icon, a signature, and a Portland trademark.

On the day of the KGW Studio on the Square tour (#kgwnow) It was hosting blooms … lots of them. An 'interactive maze', they called it, though I know of no maze that isn't. It had a pattern inside the pattern, if you knew how to look; the number 30 in purple outlined in white. 30 years of the Square.

It's gone through changes, though not too many. Powell's Travel Store has become KGW's satellite news studio (such is progress). The Crepe Faire bistro on the Morrison/Broadway corner has become a Starbucks (such is life). But the water, the fountain surrounding the Vistiors Center/Tri Met office, the curving stairs, the columns … they're all still there.

The 30 is there for the finding.

The Pioneer Courthouse holds vigil over the proceedings on the 6th Avenue side, and now that MAX is finally on the Mall, it has a modern touch in front of it every few minutes.

One of my favorite touches is on the floor of the crow's nest balcony over the walkway into the TriMet office. Inlaid in tile mosaic is a most small and darling schematic diagram of the Square.

You aren't here.

 The Starbucks bistro pavilion is a pergola-like affair. Makes for great and adventurous framing.

… and the whole texture lends itself to asbtract geometric expressionism.

Not the Stariway to Heavn … unless you think Heaven is Southwest Broadway.

The buildings muscle up on every side, creating a feeling of being in a clearing. Since the original name of our town was, in fact, "The Clearing", it makes sense. And it gives the square block a certain urban friendliness and coziness.

The Square is home to one of the iconic statues in Portland … a life-size statue of a man holding an umbrella, offering assistance. It's called Allow Me. 

He's as Portland as it gets, but I think he's an immigrant, for two reason. Number: the umbrella. We accept, here in Oregon, that they exist, but we have no truck with them. The other?

He's way too thrilled at the sunny skies.

At the leaving this day, we see the A-frame sign … which some wag has slapped the Doug thereon. Advance Cascadia Fair, oh yea.

[pdx] The Autumnal City, By Way Of SE Division Street

3082.

In another missive, I said that sometimes I find the theme, sometimes, the theme finds me. 

This is true, and relevant. Also, living in the most violently adorable photogenic city on the planet, sometimes you go out for great vistas, and sometimes, you just stumble and fall flat on your face in front of one.

This is true, and relevant, and what happened later in the evening after our visit to Piccolo Park (see missive 3081, just previous to this one).

SE Division Street is one of those infinitely-long east-west straight (well, mostly) streets that give Portland's east side its structure, its intent, and its character. It's a sweet character, and remains so even though the rents on the inner portion have become, in some areas, precipitously lofty. The lowest end is a little tricky, though. Division Street from its true beginning … SE 3rd Avenue just south of Caruthers … runs diagonally, along the rail lines that have gone through the area since it was all industrial.

It's still mostly industrial, but it's changing, slowly. Good sides and bad sides to that. That's for another program however. While travelling west on Division, with no specific agenda except to get to Powell's Books ultimately and enjoy our time there, just west of SE 11th Avenue, where the street doglegs northwestward (actually, the line of the street continues as SE Division Place until it gets as close to the Willamette as it can) we're presented with this undeniable photo opp:

BAM, as they say. There's this thing about sunsets; while there are, statistically and practically speaking, infinitely more sunsets than I'll be able to biologically endure, each one is, like the notional snowflake, never to be duplicated. The mood that each one generates is as individual as possible. Never to be synthesized, and in the end, ineffable.

Very Taoist.

The funny thing is, I immediately put  my hand out the window and pointed the camera that way, and in adjusting my grip I fired the camera three or four times. I cursed loudly, thinking I had really got some unusable photos (well, at least for this wise). Turned out perfect.

The view that is named is not the view.

The amber tone, in retrospect, makes me think of the opening lines of the Samuel R. Delany epic Dhalgren. Maybe he wrote that because every big American town is something that consumes itself from within, at the same time replenishing itself from within, borning anew constantly, and will continue to do so until it eventually collapses from within because no fuel, no matter how regenerative, would regenerate forever.

It's a an echo of majestic ruin, while still being astoundingly vital. Kind of like people.  And humanity. We contain our salvation and our ruin in one, I think.

The area, as I said, is still very industrial. If you buy anything Darigold, it came, as likely as anything, from this dairy plant between Division and Powell between SE 8th Avenue and the river. That dairy complex has been there forever. On the left there, supporting the trademark Darigold sign, is a tall column which is limned in red neon. When we lived on SE 8th near here, we would most often come in on the Ross Island Bridge. The Darigold sign was a big nightline showing us the way home. Most reassuring. 

A big old building wedged (literally, that's its shape) between Division, 11th, and the tracks is the Ford Building. That's what it started out at … a place that sold Ford automobiles back when the most popular car in the world was the Model T. These days, it's been gentrified, which means that anything in the building currently is either so cute it's uninteresting or overpriced but I guess it beats decay.

Not decay, decadence actually. But I carp.

The area has seen massive remodelling as a result of the extension of the MAX into Milwaukie. The Tilikum Crossing is just one thing. Streets have been spruced, realigned (you used to be able transition straight east from Division Place onto Division Street, now that link is gone) and, as is our adorable wont, enigmatic public art has been installed. Just this one square of the new sidewalk pavement reads:

TO READ / THE TRACKS / TO NEED TO KNOW.

I was unable to deduce what the theme here was or the intended meaning, indeed, I couldn't find any other squares so adorned, so I was left wondering. Of course, given the verbiage … maybe that was the point.

The cloud above the railroad crossing here, The Wife™ called the "greater than" cloud. Why should be obvious.

The opening lines to Dhalgren look something like this:

to wound the autumnal city.
So howled out the world to give him a name.
The in-dark answered with wind.
All you know I know:
 

It's our city, but I know it differently than you. I see shining possibility and incipient decay; I see Portland triumphant over the ages and Portland deserted and ruined; you see a group of tall buildings against a setting sun and no more.

Each view is equally valid and invalid in the human heart.

The new MAX line, looking toward Milwaukie

SE 8th Avenue and Division Place. This is a new signal.

Day is ending; night is beginning. One death is another birth,
only to eventually die and cause rebirth in return.

The autumnal city. So howled out for the world to give him a name.

Putting ones' back to the above moody scene, growing in a vacant lot at 8th and Division, beginning to blossom because of or in spite of or both, this. The in-dark answered with wind.

All you know, I know.

The hack poet and blog author finally did make it to Powells, and just to prove that all is not darkling self-absorbed poetry, a sparkling view of NW Couch Street between NW 10th and 11th Avenues, where the upside is that, for better or worse, we're still here, there's grim news abounding but the world still seems to work, and a life where you can see things like this certainly isn't entirely broken.

[Out122ndWay] Outer East Portlandia Sunrise With Added Ron Tonkin

3032.

Sunrise in Outer East Portlandia.

This contains all the things that cause anxiety to people who don't actually live out this way, but which, if you look upon things with a kinder eye, are just kind of homey.

This street is one of the 'miles and miles of unpaved streets in Portland' which seem to make so many people so unhappy. The homes are careworn, many of them, but they are also cared for; that little complex there on the right may need a coat of paint, but it's got nice people living within.

Just because this is Portland, it all has to by glossy and neat, I guess.

But I love it.

Meanwhile, southbound on NE 122nd Avenue at Glisan …

There it is, in the middle distance. You see it. Down there, on the left. A monument to an era. Once upon a time, two brothers … Marv, and Ron … opened two auto dealerships out 122nd way. The first one gave us a memorable jingle (though mayhap you moderns never heard of it. I pity you). Marv Tonkin Ford was where Courtesy Ford now is: the building, with integral arches giving a distinctive roof line, has been funadmentally re-modeled, and no trace of Marv's hand remains.

The other gave us a more visible monument:

… which is persistent and nostalgic, reminding of ages when the monumental neon sign was all. The lights still sparkle in the first name, and you can still see it from a looooong way off.

We no longer have either Tonkin with us, Ron having left us earlier this year, and Marv several years before that. There is still a surfeit of auto houses up and down 122nd between Burnside and Halsey, but Tonkin … for the love of cars … is still the king, surviving waves of Thomasons and Carrs and Alexanders and Lyman Slacks (long may their memories linger).

[pdx_liff] The British Are Coming … For Our Smallest Park!

2917.There are some things with which a native-born Oregonian, up with which, shall not put.

This is the stuff to make the unicorns which died so that Portland might be cry.

A … well, you'll pardon the gradilocution … challenger has emerged. But about that, anon. This, of course, is the justifiably-world-famous Mill Ends Park, here in the middle of Southwest Naito Parkway, cross of Taylor Street in downtown Portland.

Sourced from thither. Photo, atul666.

Now, this is actually a park that should need no introduction. It was named after a column that Dick Fagan wrote for the late, lamented Oregon Journal, called "Mill Ends"; Fagan chronicled the doings of Patie O'Toole and his fellow fae folk in what was going to be a utility pole-hole. And from that auspicious beginning, it entered the hearts of Portland citizens, at 2 feet across, as an official city park (it's not a matter of opinion. It's the position of Portland Parks & Rec. They say it's a park, therefore it is; quod erat domonstrandum, matris futuor, as that esteemed hip-hop artist MC I$aac New-Jack-ton might have said).

But you know how it is. They see us rollin'; they hatin'. First they took the title of World's Shortest River from the D River in Lincoln City, a wound with runs … pretty deep. Now, they want to dethrone Mill Ends as the World's Smallest Park.

What scoundrels would do such a thing? What dastards, you may ask.

Well, you may ask. Go ahead.

Thank you. The British. Yeah. Those guys.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth, yeah? It seems that this little triangular park, Prince's Park, has stepped up as the pretender to the title. It's here (and here's an article about it) …


View Larger Map

It's the little triangle in the center of the picture there. I used Google Maps's measuring tools and estimated it at about 10 metres on a side. It's in a locality called Burntwood, which is just adjacent and west of a place called Lichfield, Staffordshire, UK, where the civic pastime is apparently figuring out how to drop a buzzkill on The City Built on An Ancient Unicorn Burial Ground.

How very rude.

Well, I say, bring it. There's a risk in getting what you want; Let's say that they prosecute their claim and win. Where would the title move to? Burntwood, UK?

Wrong, and wrong. As some of you natives are aware, there's another notable micropark in Oregon. It's nowhere near as teensy as Mill Ends, but it's fairly large in smallness; it's Waldo Park, at the corner of Union and Summer Sts, NE, down in … Salem. Which, at 3.7 by 6.1 metres, would fit within Prince's Park. So, the title would still say in Oregon, not move to the UK.

But, like I said, bring it. Bring your seconds to Mill Ends; I'll bring my seconds. I warn you, though, my seconds are unicorns and, practically speaking, unbeatable. But you and your seconds; me and my seconds. And on that fateful day, we'll look each other in the eye and …

Hell, I don't know. Go off and  have a microbrew.

We have some killer beers around here, you know.

Read the article at Litchfield Live, where I have commented (representing, yo!):  http://lichfieldlive.co.uk/2013/04/09/worlds-smallest-park-draws-on-luck-of-the-irish-to-see-off-burntwood-challenge/

Glorified flower pot!? Indeed! How very uncouth!

[tech] Welcome Aboard Google Treasure Maps; This Is Your Pirate Speaking

2907.Just stumbled on this just now. This is something people will have fun with.

Gamboling about the globe on Google Maps and Street view, I saw a bit of a peculiarity; quite surprising actually. I've seen the buttons in Google Maps in a variety of ways, but never like this before …

Treasure?

Yes, treasure.

And what does a map of Portland look like as a Google Treasure Map? Well, like this:

 
A little rough, but nice. I mean, what does a pirate need to know except …

 Where the treasure is. How adorable. They put a bird on it.

The detail, as I said, is not great. if there were tools to draw dotted lines and such I wasn't able to find them; requesting directions just puts the regular route line and the A and B (or however many) flags on it. The real fun comes when using street view. The little guy turns into a telescope; drag the shadow of the telescope and you'll see things in glorious age-inflected sepia.

The tale is told of the Dread Pirate Greenbeard, sailing the multimodal asphalt, coming from Gresham to unleash torment and plunder upon the prime trade routes crossing the Willamette River. Enroute, he passed through the treacherous pavement in the Russellville Main:

Sailing between the Scylla of the Chevron station at SE 102nd and Stark and the Charybdis of the Starbucks and food cart pod across the street was no easy task; he hadn't had his coffee that morning, had to run out of the house so skipped breakfast, and was running low of fuel. But this privateer knew that great reward attends great risk.

After taking broadsides all the way down the Banfield freeway into town, avoiding the siren song of the Laurelhurst Theater (though not on the freeway, its song could be heard by mariners for leagues in every direction, luring them to idle hours drinking IPAs and eating pizza slices), and, going through the Straits of No Return (the Lloyd District), he finally found his goal:

Success was his. Provided he paid the licensing fee to feature the famous Portland sign in the gazette of his travels …

But then he remembered. He was a pirate.

And not even landlubbers paid that fee!

Success just got that much sweeter!

UPDATE: Google Maps Mania has some additional information, and easter eggs. Which is appropriate. 

[PDX_liff] A Tomb Opens In Westmoreland

2834.The report at KGW's website calls it An unusual Portland tradition.


Indeed? We had a 24-hour Church of Elvis and slacksters Zoobombing down from Washington Park. We're defined by unusual traditions, so it'd have to be pretty strange, yes?

Well, this qualifies. Every year, on Memorial Day, the tomb of George and Elizabeth Rea, located at Wilhelm Memorial Home, 6705 SE 14th Avenue, opens at 12:30 PM for 90 minutes to the public. You can get the view at KGW, and you've missed this year's, but you know, there's always next year.

I think this is known as becoming a Portland icon over your own dead body.

Yeah, sorry about that.