[pdx_liff] Arnold World, Paper Flower Man, In Silent Concert

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I mentioned, in the last missive, the pleasure of watching Arnold World, he of the exquisite paper flowers, do his art in the middle of Powell's Coffee Room.

It's truly a treat. Submerged in his jam, he moves with he music and the world (or perhaps the world moves with him) and paper flies back and forth across his presence, almost as though they were blithe spirits of their own, being not so much made as negotiated to his inimitable, eventually irresistible will.

It's a public performance that's impossible not to watch.



And if you introduce yourself to him while he's working, he just might give you a blossom.

He also has a website: It's WorldPaperFlowers.com.

[pdx_liff] Powell's Books = Our Personal Sacrament

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We have a nickname for our regular Sunday night sojourn to Powell's City'o'Books, or I do, anyway:

Book Church.

It's a sacrament, a worship. It can be as spiritual as you want, as worldly, or as profane. The Wife™ dabbles in metaphysics, humanity and puzzles, and I ascend, without fail, to the summit, to commune with all the art teachers in the art techniques aisle in the Pearl Room.

I adore the way this couple just hunkered in the corner of the landing going up from the Rose Room to the Pearl Room. So ineffably romantic.

… but then, Powell's exists for you to love and it loves you back, if you respect it. It's a store, and it's also a place to hang and absorb. Buch luft macht frei.

The Rose room landing area has gone through a bit of a rethink lately. The big rack of travel accessories at the landing is gone and the maps have moved about a bit, and instead of the old big desk the customer service people sat behind, there's this open, moddish S-curve now:

All Powell's employees are beautiful, of course. This woman's hairdo is one of the neatest things I can think of. Retro in the good way.

After I browse the Pearl Room (the afterlife should look like the Pearl Room, I should hope), I come down the stairs into the Rose Room ...

… and the next 'station of the cross' is the Blue Room, where literature is found. Here is where I met Marcel Proust, Annie Lamott, Adam Gnade, Raymond Carver …

And then it's rendezvous in the Coffee Room, where The Wife™ and myself have caffiene communion. Occasionally we share a shortbread host.

… and, sometimes, if we're lucky, Arnold World, the patron Saint of Paper Flowers, is coaxing paper towels into blossoms.

Our officiants now are hard at work behind the altar … a young woman with a delightful Commonwealth accent:

And a pleasant, intense fellah with remarkable ink.

We all take our God whene we find him.
To us, anything from Powell's is ex cathedra. 

[pdx] The View From The Stadium Fred Meyer Overlook, 3rd Floor

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We've been to this view point before, but one level down.

I miss some things about NW Portland. I lived there at one time, long before things got fashionable and expensive, in a house between 21st and 22nd on NW Flanders Street. It was a good time. I can't go back to this area without thinking about it.

My first drawing board, real drawing board, was bought at Stadium Fred Meyer. I still have it; it's my wife's now. It was an entirely different building then. Now, of course, is the days of Trader Joe's (formerly the Thriftway on NW Glisan), conveyor belt sushi in the Stadium Fred Meyer, and a luscious 3-floor viewpoint in that Fred Meyer that you can see good things from.

The earlier vantage, the 2nd floor was good enough. The third floor?

"Get that western sky, said Wife™, meaning this view to the southeast (well, it's a Western sky, no matter which way you look, innit?). That tallest building is the lamented and overdue Park Avenue West, about to be the 3rd tallest building within the boundaries of Oregon, at 31 stories. And it's almost done.

Some people are pretty lucky. You look west and south at the hillside, and you see some of them:

The Wife™ noticed this aspect and zoomed in on the house on the right; I chose a wider angle. The big askew building is the grand old Vista Saint Clair apartments, named for the street they sit at the corner of. The cornice in the foreground belongs to the home of the Kingston Tavern. That house and the motel-like apartments to the left of it, those are located on SW 21st Avenue, and they look out (obvs.) over all those buildings and get a great view - or blinded when the sun reflects off the Wells Fargo Tower. Either way, with rents being what they were in this area … it'll cost you.

One corner that seems marooned in time is the corner of West Burnside and SW 21st Avenue, seen here:

Unlike most signs which stand for their historic value, the VOLVO isn't up there for the sake of atmosphere. That glossy teal building is still, to this day, the home of Jim Fisher Volvo, was probably since before I was born (a point we shan't explore apresent). The little brown building in front of it is Levine's Dry Cleaning, which sports the same sign it had back when I lived along NW Flanders back in the 80s. 

Like I said, good times. Behind the cornice on the lower left? Down that street used to be the studios of KPTV, Channel 12, back the in glory days. 735 SW 20th Place. Classic Portland, right there.

At least you don't have to pay rent to watch the view from the Stadium Fred Meyer, not just yet. And, if you look up NW 20th Avenue, just over the trees …

Yep. The arch of the Fremont Bridge. 

Real Portland.

[pdx] Portland Amber Evening with Moon Shot

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By last evening the extraordinarily thick haze from the wildfires in the east had cleared from the Valley somewhat, and visibility was much improved. But, as atmospheric events like this are wont to do, the visual aftereffects linger. This was downtown Portland, taken from the intersection of SE 12th Avenue and Morrison Street, looking west at about 7:00 PM:

I understand that glowing thing in the sky is a thing called "the Sun". Whether or not this is a cause for alarm remains to be seen.

The Coffee Room at Powell's City 'o' Books turned out to be a site for astronomical photography experimentation, naturally unexpected. The Wife™ saw what looked to be a half-moon setting over the Buffalo Exchange building across the street, and wanted a picture of that. Nothing really worked, and then I started playing with the camera a bit. Went into Manual mode and played the hell out of exposure and focal length, jacked up the zoom into the virtual range, and this is what I got:

As awesome a camera as it is, the Canon PowerShot S100 isn't the ideal camera for astronomical photos, and this won't get published in Astronomy magazine, but it's not too terribly bad, and much better than I expected. If I had a tripod with me and weren't taking pictures out of a fully-lit room, who knows? I could have gotten clear craters maybe.

[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. 

[logo] Have You Seen The New Portland Streetcar Logo?

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I noticed this one a few weeks back. The Portland Streetcar, enjoying expansion to the east side and the prospect of actually closing a loop once the Tilikum Crossing is finally open, has a new look for its logo. Before, it look thusly:

The old look, with the city silhouette and the crossing tracks, is still on the stop's signs. It's a nice logo, pretty basic, rather flat. Gets the job done, though.

But then I saw this, now appearing on the streetcars themselves, though not at the stops yet:

Kind of nifty, no? There's more thought and deliberation with the type, which has an echo of Underground and Gill Sans. The logo has, rather refreshingly, avoided the driver to have something obviously Portland-esque in it, and has gone for a total abstraction. It reminded me of something more than a clever opened-circle and an abstract S. Not that I wasn't enjoying the suggestion of tracks effectively communicated by the break in the S-form.

And then I thought of the German S-bahn, and it's standard S-in-a-circle logo, which you'll see right here. The S-bahn is comparable in service to the Portland Streetcar; the Stadtschnellbahn provides more local and street level, perhaps you'd say 'tram' (in the European street-train sense rather than the American gondola-hanging-from-a-great-height sense) level service … much like the Portland Streetcar, which connects with its community in much more intimate way than the MAX, meant to pick you up here and get you out there, does.

A variation on the S-bahn logo, or the S-bahn logo being in inspiration? Sure. Why not?

We find the Portland Streetcar logo upgrade worthy. 

[pdx] NW 11th and Davis, Sunday Afternoon

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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. 

[pdx] The View Of The Stadium From the Stadium Fred Meyer

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For a very long time now, tucked into the tony area around NW 20th Ave and West Burnside Street, there's been a Fred Meyer store … the Stadium Fred Meyer. Adjacent to what we now call Providence Park, which was called Jeld-Wen Field, which was called PGE Park before that, the structure was once known as Civic Stadium, a rubric I still think of it as.

Too, the Stadium Fred Meyer store has been through an immense amount of change. It's recently completed a re-re-re-invention, and is quite a comfortable place to watch the city go by.

It has comfortable places to take your food you just got from the deli and look over the intersection of 20th and W Burnside. And it frames the 20th/Burnside gates to Providence Park handsomely - and somewhat intriguingly. There's a dystopian vibe in the way that low tin structure (with two of our ubiquitous street-food trucks in front) kind of distresses the view. Kind of like a scene out of Soylent Green, but with much, much fewer people.

The gates to the gladiatorial arena we love so much. The Timbers do an interesting thing. They get fans to pose for pictures every year and the best go on billboards and such. The fellah on the left of the clock has a rather witty jersey which tells you how much pity an opponent will receive in an ideal match. Ideal matches don't always happen, of course; that's why sportswriters are still so important.

The 5/40 logo is all about team history. In 1975, the Timbers heralded the coming of Soccer City USA, and that's been 40 years. 5 years ago, in 2010, the Timbers joined the ranks of MLS.

History. There's always more of it. And I actually love the way a football club can make abstruse symbolism out of it all. Portland's love of soccer seems very European in this regard.

Immediately west of this intersection is a wedge-shaped block bounded by SW Morrison Street, 20th Avenue, and West Burnside. That building above is one of my favorites. The lower floor is the Kingston Saloon, a long-time fixture in the nabe and, as one can see (and cannily so), a local headquarters for Timbers fans on match day.

The city grid south of West Burnside from the river to about 21st Avenue is canted to follow the river. The grid north of that aligns pretty close to the North Star (which is why it's tilted ever-so-slightly off plumb). The collision of the two grids results in a fun, interesting pattern, dog-legging streets and wedge-shaped blocks which makes for a singularly-interesting place to roam. It's long been one of my favorite parts of town for this reason.

My favorite signs are the non-standard ones.  And, a big no-no in design is stacked type, but there are places where it's appropriate. Here, for instance.

Fred Meyer's type style has changed over the years, but in the modern age, it's always been italicized, bolded, and red. It's a familiar approach and comforting … Fred Meyer has essentially been Kroger West for quite a while now, and just to show I'm not throwing too much of a shade on them, I'll give them credit for maintaining the look, feel, and atmosphere of an honored, Oregon-born-and-bred brand name.

Portland without Fred Meyer really wouldn't be Portland anymore, would it? Kroger seems to understand this. That's responsible brand stewardship I can respect.

Photo by The Wife™; one of inner Portland's ubiquitous streetlamps … now, as I've said many a time, I was born in Silverton and spent the majority of my teen years in Salem. Portland's always been a little more proud of its patina of age than cities down state, and for me, the wonderful streetlamps exemplify that.

It might not be Portland's signature …  but it could be one of them.

Sunday afternoon, May 30th, 2015. Dateline, Portland, Oregon … my home town.

[pdx] Anonymous Urban Vista, NW Portland, NW 11th Ave By Powell's

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This photo I enjoy and snapped because of it's photographic non-specificness. This could be anywhere, in Anybigcity, USA.

To be exact, it's a bit of NW 11th Avenue between Burnside and Couch Streets. That building is, of course, Powell's City'O'Books … the 2nd floor and up of that building is the parking garage which is old, respectable, and, sadly, no longer as affordable as it once once. Sic transit gloria mundi, I suppose.

The Coffee Room, where so many cozy Sunday nights are spent, is just visible on the extreme right of the picture, in windows overlooking the rear-end of that red car. It was lensed in March of 2014.

My hometown is special, but it's also got things every other big town has. And I love those too. 

[pdx] Looking West From Laurelhurst, Sunday Afternoon

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Pointed west, into the long afternoon, at 32nd and East Burnside, the Burnside portal to the Laurelhurst neighborhood:

They say Portland's east side is 'flat'. I've always laughed at that description. In some places, not even comparably flat serves the topography. It's level in spots but well makes up for it in others.

Several places offer these long, lovely vistas down eastside streets. In the distance, you'll see the US Bancorp Tower (Oregon's 2nd tallest building) and backing that up, the West Hills area approximating King's Heights. These views are particularly intriguing to me because the large blocks of mass depicted by the trees and the road resolve into nice simple shapes that suggest an impressionist painting. 

[pdx] A Touch of Pride at Powell's City of Books

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Also, this last Sunday was the apex of Pride Weekend in Portland, and the joie de vivre was manifest throughout the downtown area. Holiday spirit was pervasive. Naturally a lot of those people we saw at Powell's but I didn't get too many pictures … but I did get one.

The couple walked into the coffee room and the black-dressed one stood out immediately, as much for height as anything else; slender and easily 6-foot-5 plus in height, they were what we, back in the day, would call a 'tall drink of water' … although the slim-fitting black-and-mesh outfit added a strong dash of spirit to that glass of water.

I tried to get an unaware photo of them, because they moved with such an easy way, very comfortable in their world, I found that quite attractive. But, as anyone can see, someone had my number. Ah, well … you can't win 'em all.

I didn't have the courage to walk up and say hi; I wanted to showcase the casual gestalt, and that would have ruined what was left. But The Wife™ did approach our tall friend as the couple left the coffee room, and complimented the hair color.

My wife has a certain ebullience. It was a positive boon here. I hope the rest of their life is as casual as the ease at which they carried themselves there. That would be a sort of bliss, I think. 

[pdx] The Napkin Flower Guy at Powell's City of Books

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Somehow, over time, the Coffee Room at Powell's City of Books has become a regular haunt for our Sunday evenings. It's started to feel like a part of our home; even if we don't plan on buying a book that day, we're there, drinking in the atmosphere, seeing the people, and enjoying the still-affordable Portland downtown sunset, which can be had in abundance through the newly-replaced and capacious windows.

Our home from home, late Sunday afternoon

The coffee there is excellent, I don't mind saying.

Occasionally, you'll see, if you're of the right timing, pale flowers left behind. If they seem to be made of the same material as the napkins, that's because they are; and though they seem to appear as if by magic, they're the product of this fellow:

He works patiently, sometimes conversing with people beside him, sometimes intently focussed. His technique is immaculate and precise and he never makes a bad move. All of his creations are beautiful, otherworldly, and somewhat haunting.

Sometimes he lingers 'till quite late and then leaves a few works behind. This particular Sunday, he packed up fairly early, lovingly placing each finished blossom inside a plastic box for protection in transportation, and left with the lot.

He wears a black cap with the legend WORLDFLOWERS upon the front.

I was happy to catch him in the moment of communication.

[PDX] The View Down Sandy Blvd, The Hard Way

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I was in slight danger for taking this picture. This is looking west down NE Sandy Blvd while in the crosswalk with the WALK signal favoring us. The nearest cars you see down the road there.

We were in vague peril but not imminent danger. The Wife™ stood sentinel duty.

The nifty thing about Sandy is that, from its origin at SE 7th Avenue and Washington Street to where it meets Killingsworth in Parkrose at NE 99th Avenue, it's more or less a straight diagonal line (as it ascends the Alameda Ridge, between just west of downtown Hollywood and NE 57th Avenue, it kinks right then left ever so slightly. You can scarcely see this on a map).

And it's pointed toward downtown, and gives great views as you come closer.

That big domino against the hills is, of course, my beloved Wells Fargo tower. Just as far away and just behind that copse of street trees is the KOIN Center, and with KATU just a block and a half away behind us and to our right, I noted that if you stand at the corner of NE 21st and Sandy and look down the street, you can see it, meaning you can see one major Rose City TV station from the other.

KGW is not visible in this shot, of course.

Again I used sightlines to force perspective and creat a faux-telephoto effect. Cropping out parts of this photo would result in very nice abstract-urban bits.

[PDX] More Wildfire-Inflected Sunset Pictures, From Inner NE Portland

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Yesterday, when we were busy taking poses of the KATU studios, we did, in fact see the sunset.

I've been calling these Wildfire Sunsets and -Sunrises because the amber, gold, oranges, and reds I've seen in the sky really do seem unique and unusual, and the only cause I can logically single out is the Scroggins Valley Fire and the 36 Pit Fire. In this case, it's Scroggins Valley … these pictures are looking due west down NE Hoyt Street from NE 21st Avenue.

It's hard to resist taking the pictures when the clouds throw their shadows.

Certain similes including the names of some boiling precious metals seem not at all amiss here.

[PDX] The Studios of Portland: KATU, On Your East Side

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A few days ago I'd visited the surrounds of KGW-TV, Channel 8, over on SW Jefferson St. And I'd rhapsodized about the KOIN Center before that. But one of Portland's Three Sisters of Broadcasting had escaped my lens, and that would be that (former) Fisher's Blend station, KATU.

KATU Logos over the years.

KATU's studios occupy what was originally a five-sided city block bounded on the north by NE Hoyt Street, on the south by NE Sandy Blvd and a slivery piece of NE Glisan Street, on the west by NE 21st Avenue and on the east by NE 22nd. Its official address is 2153 NE Sandy Blvd, and the station has lived in this building since it was inaugurated in the early 1960s. It has also been an ABC station for all but about a year of its existence, and while the other major outlets in town have changed affiliations at least once or twice (even KPTV was an NBC station at one time), KATU has been Portland's ABC stalwart … though it is, it is said, the fourth Portland station to be an ABC affiliate.

The current look of the building dates from sometime in the 1980s, if memory serves. It removed the old logo (a big 2, shaped something like a top-heavy swan) from the building and went big for beige. The station ID gracing the SE and S sides of the building visible from Sandy Blvd date back to about that time. Earlier versions of the logo (including the classic swan-2) can be seen in the paragraph above.

The current facade of the building, oddly, is not where you find the front door. See the photo above. That corner of the building, including that white-stuccoed corner with the single grey door in it that holds the station's 2153 address in bold numbers was once the main entry. After the major remodel in the 80s, that entry moved to the other side of the building. But stay tuned for that, as they say.

The above shot is taken looking south on NE 22nd toward Sandy Blvd. The charming brick building was at one time a jazz club named E.J.'s; now it's the east wing of Silver Lining Jewelry and Loan. It's a pawn shop. That van is turning into NE Glisan St going east from Sandy and 22nd; it diverges from here to take you into the heart of Laurelhurst, Providence Hospital, and points east and east of that.

Moving to the NW corner of this block … NE 21st Avenue and Hoyt Street … is where the somewhat counter-intuitive actual-main-entry to the KATU studio is. I remember being here for that KATU blogger meetup a few years back,  still a cherished memory. And, while the logo on the other sides of the building recall a slightly earlier time, the ones over the main entry are up to date:

The current logo, the current On Your Side tagline, and the call sign of the Portland Univision outlet … KUNP. This is what they apparently call a 'duopoloy', which is a broadcasting thing.

Fittingly, the new logo and IDs are on the building's side (COMEDY GOLD! YOU'RE WELCOME, PORTLAND!)

Now I mentioned the five-sided block with a sliver of NE Glisan. Here's that side of the building today:

That long, flat side of the building with the landsaping in front of it, that landscaping used to be street. And that street was technically part of NE Glisan, though there was not enough of it to make a full-width street there. Out of shot on the left the not-so-busy part of NE Glisan Street continues nto the formerly-industrial neighborhood north of Sandy and south of I-84. Presumably this was done to make the intersection safer; Glisan and Sandy are both very busy arterials at this point, and the same thing about the diagonal of Sandy that creates those quirky little corners and interestingly-shaped blocks also make for dangerous intersections. And so that goes.

The part of the building that surrounds it like wainscoting is perhaps the part with the most visible history to it. Remember how I told you that SE corner of the building used to be the main entry? Well, check this out:

Note how the stone tile has a certain change of tone from just the other side of the CHANNEL 2 metal type there to the white pillar at the corner? That was part of the original entry way. And the addres numbers appear not just once on the building, but twice …

… on that metal flag that shows about fifty-odd years worth of wear. I find it sweet that KATU has left those old address numbers there. Makes me smile. I like anyone and anything that appreciates its own history, and KATU, being a broadcast station, and especially with its Fisher Broadcasting roots, knows how to do that

The motif here is along the west side of the building and I took it before we left to get some other pictures of the neighborhood because it's the only side of the building you'll find that on. And it's an interesting one, which suggests nature or canoes or something. It's really hard to say. But I like seeing it there.