21st Century Man, or: My Future, And Welcome To It

3947

This missive, and this picture, document (or attempt to) a singular emotion. 

Life moves past you at an odd clip. It's not constant. And it seems gradual, until that moment it's not. 

I'm aging. I don't make an issue of what my exact age is; if you read enough of my rattling, I'm sure you can reason it out. But it's sunk in that I've been around a while, and despite being born in Silverton and spending my teens and twenties around Salem and Corvallis, I've been a Portlander the majority of my life now (the implications vis a vis lifespan I'll not dwell on for the moment, if it's alright with y'all).

I've seen changes, is what I'm saying. The town I fell in love with as a kid and commenced a long process of killing myself to become a local in has become, fulsomely, a fundamentally different place.

Dig, if you will, this picture.

If you go to the riverside esplanade just the other side from Naito Parkway of the Waterfront Pearl condos, you go to the north end of that walk, which is as far as it goes (for now), and you look southwest, you see the above view. 

The street intersection is NW Naito Parkway and NW 9th Av.

I spoke of changes. I used to work in this area at a building that still stands where NW 15th and Thurman merge and cross the railroad tracks, just across from where NW Naito Parkway reverts to its seminal name, NW Front Av. I doubt that anyone living now in the condo tower forest that has spread from the Main Post Office building to that point can even envision that it was once a rather vacant urban wasteland; a big rail yard. I still remember. My office left that area around 2005; from our offices windows we watched the steady encroachment of development. Not even I figured it would get that far but there it is, now.

There were comics when I was a kid, where the protagonist would be projected into the future. They'd look around, gobstopped in wonder, as they viewed great glittering futuristic towers, sided in glass and shining steel, some with curving, sculpted sides and they'd stare agape at architectures they could only just comprehend.

As I looked at those buildings from that point on that day, a certain emotion started in my head and reached down and took hold of my heart, and I realized that I was that guy. This was still Portland. I still grokked the geography. But something that was, within my adult memory, acres of vacant lots and rail yard had become this hulking, crowded thing.

Same planet, but a different world. And I was aware of it, as though it was, for a moment, a palpable thing, a thing that could be held in my hand.

Parents have had this feeling, in their times and ways. Our collective descendants will have the same experience, Anthropogenically-induced environment change-willing. 

And now, I guess, it's my turn.

They Sell Actual Typewriters at Oblation Papers and Press

3747

We sallied forth in search of fountain pen cartridges.

I don't make a huge deal of it here but I am fond of fountain pens for a bunch of reasons, some of them intellectual (Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the author seems to make pointed note of, uses a dip or fountain pain in writing his illicit diary) but most of them sensual (handwriting aficionados probably have a gut feeling for what I just now laid down, and I hope it's a solid ASMR hit, too). I have a Kaweco Perkeo in the Old Chambray color style, and have had a lot of happy fun writing with the Preppy Platinum fountain pen, a low-cost, good-quality, high-value way of satisfying your fountain pen writing jones on the cheap.

Birbs, they haz them too.

Recently I was sent a vintage fountain pen by a beloved friend as a memento. It's neither of the above brands and needs a proprietary-design ink cartridge, and in this world where everything seems to fall out of the sky if you ask the right way this was a bit harder to locate. 

But this is Portland, Oregon, and we do stuff artistically AF, yo, so, no, finding this sort of thing is hardly impossible and led us down a very delightful path which ended at a place at 516 NW 12th Avenue called Oblation Papers & Press. 

This is a worthwhile place to be for anyone who loves letterpress, old-school printing, stationery and pens and pencils. They have it all there from Mont Blanc pens to Blackwing pencils ... and they had what I'm looking for, the Lamy T-10 ink cartridge. Sadly, the darkest Lamy ink is only blue-black, and I much prefer the absolutest black ink I can find, but the quality is quite nice and I won't mind this.

They have a great many paper products, all very artisanal (and I mean this is in the good, not my usual sarcastic way). They do custom jobs for special occaisions ... and they have this, which had me over the moon: honest-to-goodness typewriters. 

Now, mind you, those old-school presses in the back there got my attention as well, but I couldn't get all drooly over those. Just as well. All the typewriters seen  here are on sale, and one can go right up to them and give 'em a few test hunt'n'pecks if they are so inclined.

Prices? Well, technology being what it is, actual mechanical typewriters are a thing of vintage, and these are priced to match. The days of finding a retired typewriter at the stack at the back of the Goodwill store for five to ten bucks are long, long gone, my friends. These are all lovingly refurbished and run about $100 and up. 

But if it's a vintage typewriter you're looking for, you'll get what you pay for. The picture below is a model that caught my eye because it looks like one of the models that L. Ron Hubbard used to brag about wearing out because he typed on them so hard. What's really eye-catching about this one is the keys that show this was obviously produced for a certain European market, with a QWERTY keyboard but with an Å next to the P and a Æ with an Ø to the right of the L.

Danish, Norwegian, Faroese, Wikipedia tells me. 

We weren't able to stay long but we'd like to be going back here I think, and I'll be taking more pictures at a later time perhaps. It's around the corner from Portland's Dick Blick store, so those who want to spend a leisurely afternoon with upscale art supplies ... well, here's your place.

They sell actual typewriters at Oblation Papers & Press.

Because this is Portland, and that's what we do here.

Northwest 11th by Powells On Any Given Late Afternoon In The Long Ago

3672

This one tugged at the heartstrings, you know, now that we're all in search of lost time.

The point of view is the units block of NW 11th Avenue, between Couch and Burnside. I'm facing north-northwest. Powell's Books is at my back and on the right. The building you're looking at is called the M Financial Center, which impresses me in as much as I know of no other letter of the alphabet that has so much finance devoted to it.

The intersection in view is that of NW 11th Avenue and Couch St.

NW 11th and Couch is unique amongst Portland intersections is that it is the only place in the city of Portland and indeed the state of Oregon where the so-called 'scramble' crossing is implemented. Couch traffic goes and Couch pedestrians can cross; then 11th Avenue traffic goes and 11th Avenue pedestrians cross; then all traffic on the streets stop and the six cross walks (two for each street and two diagonals crossing the middle) flow. It's an innovative thing and maybe it's the mad dash of everyone toward the Powell's entry on 11th and Couch convinced the city to put it there, I don't know. It's been three years and more since it's been put in and I hear nothing about it being put elsewhere, which is strange in our town where traffic patterns seem disrupted on the basis of wish and whimsy in these latter days.

Indeed, the streets there are so very narrow it's hard to see who, if anyone, is really saving any time by cutting across.

Quite a few years ago, as a teenager in Salem, I remember the city there piloting the idea at the corner of High and Center Streets, and in Salem that makes sense as the street widths there amount to a considerable hike. Surprising therefore that it never caught on there. I guess we love it here, we inscrutable, quirky Portlanders who do things, I guess, just for the sake of being seen doing 'em.

Anyway, that was then and this is now and Powell's is still not opening, not yet. We remain hopeful but understand why this is.

So it goes.

Men At Work: Portland Edition

3542.

Yesterday morning I went down to the OSU Food Innovation Center to do a taste test. It was burger patties. Rated two samples, each about a quarter of a small patty, and since my taste buds had been sharpened by coming directly off work and not having anything since The Wife™'s lovingly-calibrated snack she sent me off to work with, it was like this tiny feast.

They were both superb. One a little more superb than the other, but it's hard to put me off when it comes to hamburgers.

The OSU FIC is on NW Naito Parkway (or "Front Avenue", if you have the memory) just north of the Broadway Bridge, just south of the NW 9th Avenue signal, wedged between the street and the rail tracks going northward out of town toward Seattle. Immediately across the tracks from us, there's yet another building of some sort going up (don't ask me, I can't keep up anymore), and there were workers on it, and beyond that, a 15-story condo silo called The Pinnacle (presumably to differentiate it from other pinnacles in the area, and my, haven't a lot of them sprung up in that area in the last decade?). And, after I got my bits'o'burger and collected my $30, I went out to the lobby and my love was chatting with another woman who was there, and then she pointed out the window and had me look at the men at work there.

I pointed and shot. Cameras are like the best thing ever any more. At least we have that workin' for us. Which is nice.

The building in the foreground (don't ask me, I only live here) has four men on those pillars: the two on the left have orange shirts, the two on the right, yellow shirts.

The building beyond, The Pinnacle, has four guys cleaning the windows (truth be told, one or more may be women. I had no chance to go up and ask). One of the window washers is on the balcony between the two glass faces. Here's a closer look at them:

What I wasn't able to capture at the moment was the farthestmost-right one, he was having himself (or herself) an enjoyable time swinging back and forth.

Well, that's just the sort of thing someone enjoying that sort of thing would enjoy, I guess. They go up there so you don't have to.

[pdx] Scenes From A Pearl: A Woman On NW Couch St

3351.

There is a small covered plaza open to the public on NW Couch Street, south side, between NW 11th and 12th Avenues. It's in the middle of the block, across the street from the main lobby entry to a building called M Financial Plaza, and is properly part of the Brewery Blocks, in the crook of a building called the Brew House Tower.

Blitz Weinhard used to actually produce actual Northwest beer here. I'm both amused and dismayed at myself that Even though I've been hanging around this area of town, off and on, for the last couple of decades … innumerable trips to Powell's Books … the change has been so gradual that even my memory of what it used to be has begun to undergo major slippage.

But this day, which was a day back in June, we sat, The Wife™ and I, sharing a coffee and splitting a 3-pack of some really quite-scrumptious madeleines that we got at the Peet's Coffee there on Couch, next to the Sur le Table. They're very nice at the Peet's, and frequently accomodate us even though we typically roll in there about 15 minutes, give or take, before closing time.

This is our 'Madeleine moment', which we originally did on a lark because we wanted a coffee and we went in there and there they were and I had just commenced reading La recerches du temps perdu. Latterly it seems my spouse is starting to enjoy it more than me. I'll not complain, here. The madeleines are immaculate. And, the Peet's closes at 7 PM on a Sunday, so having this spot to relax and enjoy them is essential.

I noted the woman as we walked into the covered plaza area. She was not easy to miss; attractive young woman, dressed for the weather in a cropped top, short skirt, and attractive legs clad in patterned tights. As I recall, she wore sunglasses with big lenses. Very distractedly urban.

After we sat at a table many feet back of her the scene took on a different aspect. There was something of  alienation there. She seemed very within herself, as she sat on the arm of a chair and desultorily drank from three green bottles of sparking water that she had there. She was quiet, never saying a thing; she was in the world, but it was as though she and the world weren't on speaking terms just at that moment.

Eventually, but not too long after this, she packed up and moved out.

In the center of the block, visible from the little plaza where we drank our coffee and masticated our madeleines, there is a chiminey stack from the old brewery. While parts of the old buildings remain on this block, the vast majority of the buildings there are of new and recent construction and went up when the area was developed in the last decade.

I couldn't help but wonder how many new Portlanders go by that area and think that these buildings must have looked different when they were a brewery. Most of the buildings never were, of course, but I can't help also but think that most people are either too new ot Portland or too disinterested to think that these buildings could ever have been anything but.

[pdx] NW 11th and Davis, Sunday Afternoon

3200.

Last Sunday afternoon we were back on NW 11th, and instead of going straight into Powell's, we walked up a block.

This building, on the NW corner of NW 11th and Davis, now largely contains something called the "Pearl Auto Park". It's the sort of building you used to find throughout this section of town … this was part of the brewery district when Blitz was still being brewed here.

I can still smell the smell of brewing happening, in my mind. We've been haunting Powell's for that long, yes.

In front of us, now, The Arrmory, and the Gerding Theatre; much play happens there. The ziggurat beyond didn't exist ten years ago. This is such a different place now.

… but the buskers are still the same.

… and we have rail.

The block of NW 11th between Burnside and Couch, which I rhapsodized about last week, from a remove, with the Streetcar. The new-old debate of the geography is joined in earnest here. Whether or not it belongs, it's all here, now.