Ex Libris, Marian Frances Milne, of Portland, 1920

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before I delve into this 1920 geography and its aged delights, I wanted to show you all what I found in the inside front cover and also the front endpaper.

The owner and location of the book lovingly inscribed thereupon is what appears to be a light green ink in classic penmanship of the day:

The script parses as follows:

Marian Frances Milne
1317 E. 12th St North
Corner of Holman
Portland ore

Telephone: Walnut-1279

 The addressing would seem quite nonsensical to a modern-day Portlander, but as I've pointed out, long long ago, the address system in Portland was quite different before the 1930s. Today, an address on NE 12th Avenue at Holman would be in the 6300s, and the expression of the street name would be much different: East 12th Street North reflects its location north of Burnside and on the east side of the river, but in those days, numbered streets outside of downtown were prefixed east and suffixed north if they were north of the Burnside baseline. The comparative small magnitude of the house number came from that there were only 20 house numbers to the block in those days.

But whether or not you grok how Portland laid out its house numbering prior to the Great Renaming of 1933, the careful penmanship is actually rather heartbreakingly beautiful. One can picture the nib varying the flow of ink with pressure. 

Truly, art.

Mulugeta Seraw

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In 1988, an Ethiopian immigrant was murdered in inner southeast Portland. 

But I get ahead of myself.

On a number of street blades on corners near SE 28th and Stark, and a little north and a little east of this, you will see this topping them:

A lot of people know about it, but a lot don't, and I see the questions about them, so I figured I'd leave this here to be found.

It's an unusual design. The gentleman's photo, the unfamiliar script, the lifespan meted in one set of numbers on one side and another set, with seven years' difference, on the other. I'll tell you a little about that, now. For the back story, one can check out this Wikipedia page on Mulugeta Seraw; if you don't go there, understand this much: on a night in 1988, on SE 31st Avenue between Stark and Burnside, three local white supremacist skinheads affiliated with the White Aryan Resistance and another group called East Side White Pride encountered the then-28-year-old man and, indicting him on being African and an immigrant, beat him to death with a baseball bat, because amongst white supremacists this amounts to a capital crime.

The top of display is a cameo depiction of Mulugeta Seraw, which should be an obvious point. His name is rendered in the Amharic language in the Ge'ez script which is the lingua franca of the Ethiopian nation and its graphic method of expression, respectively. The difference in the years comes from the fact that, in Ethiopia, they reckon years a little differently; there is a seven years' difference. Mr. Seraw was born in 1960 by our calendar but 1953 by the Ethiopian one.

So it's a memorial to Mulugeta Seraw in the area which he was murdered, an attempt to never forget what happened and also a way to remember why. These are battles which we still fight today and are still waging. Strangely, there are those amongst us who still insist that this is the proper way to treat other human beings, and so the reminders must persist.

Stark Street, Montavilla

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Another one of those tight zoom shots I love doing so much because they make me think telephoto. 

This is looking down SE Stark Street into downtown Montavilla. The hillside ahead is the north shoulder of Mount Tabor.

There's an interesting thing I found out about Mount Tabor recently. Apparently there's a standard for height below which a peak will not be named "Mount" by whatever geographic nomenclature authority applies (a board under the aegis of the USGS, I think) and Mount Tabor does not meet that standard. However, since generations of Oregonians have called in Mount Tabor, the history of the name establishes the right. 

The name Montavilla was inspired by Mount Tabor, but in an indirect way according to the book Portland's Streetcar Lines, published in 2010 by Richard Thompson. The community was named Mount Tabor Village, originally, but signage of the first streetcar lines abbreviated this Mt. Ta. Villa. Over time this evolved into Montavilla as the coinage grew popular. 

The streetcar line died long ago. Its cultural rubric child, however, has never been stronger. 

Also, at 76th and SE Stark, you'll find Mr. Plywood. Best urban lumber store ever. Just take my word for that.

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.

Vanport, And All That Came After

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Last evening we saw an oral history presentation at the Midland Library called "A Place Called Home: Vanport to Albina", presented by the Vanport Mosaic project.

It was quite an experience.

I expected an informative Portland history experience, and that's what I got. Got more than that, though, much more. The presentation was well-attended, and a great many in the audience had histories stretching into Vanport ...

Vanport is a thing that can be Googled and read about in books. It was, for a short time, one of Oregon's largest towns. During the years of 1942-1948, it housed literally tens of thousands of people who came to Portland from all over the USA to work in Henry Kaiser's shipyards. What it physically was was a housing development on the floodplain of the Columbia River between the Columbia Slough and the river's south bank and running east from the railroad embankment to Denver Avenue and today's Interstate 5. The footprint of Vanport (so named because it was shimmed between VANcouver and PORTland) is still visible between the river and the slough, the railroad embankment and Denver Avenue; some of the streets of Vanport were evolved into parts of the track at Portland International Raceway.

At the end of May, 1948, the railroad embankment - which was holding back a historically-swollen Columbia River - gave way, letting waves of floodwater rush in. The buildings making up the houses of Vanport - inexpensively constructed, on inadequate foundations - floated about like toy boats in a bathtub. In just a few hours, Vanport became a "Dead Memory of Portland" decades before such a thing became cool. The residents, a large percentage of whom were not white, suddenly found themselves having to sink or swim, socially and economically, in a city that to this day is still renowned for being Caucasian AF. Discrimination and redlining put them in the North Portland neighborhood known as Albina and set the tone for decades of race relations in Portland.

The presentation was one of stories. Stories from those who survived the flood and went on to forge lives in Oregon and Portland. They were personified in the flesh by Velynn Brown, a granddaughter of Vanport survivors and a grandmother now herself; she told the story of community handed down through the generations with warmth, emotion and undeniable passion, family, and basketball rivalry ... the longstanding crosstown struggle between Portland's Jefferson and Grant High Schools being a contest that would stand up in furiosity against any big-league tug-of-war.

The real impact for me was all the living history in the room. There was an elderly Japanese-American couple there; they not only were interred during World War II but landed in Vanport because, as Americans of Japanese descent, it was the only place that they could go. Harvey Garnett put in an unexpected appearance: it was he who owned and operated the only black-owned movie theatre in Portland (and perhaps America), The Alameda, which we know today as the Alberta Rose Theater at NE 30th and Fremont.

In the 1970s, the Williams Avenue commercial district was displaced when the Portland Development Commission's plans to allow Emanuel Hospital to expand throughout that area were executed, a move that destroyed Oregon's black downtown. It's one thing to read about this thing, but it's a palpable thing when all those descendents of Vanporters are watching too. They're seeing their own pasts and it's as though all those people who lived in those times were there with you too, eager to tell their stories to those who would listen.

After the event, oral historian Velynn Brown converses with
Harvey "Mr. Alameda" Garnett

There were just three white men in there, and I was one-third of that. Never fear, White America, one of us White Men bravely and compassionately informed the presenter that it's also important to remember that there were people of other skin colors and while the black experience was important, maybe from here we could all move forward as one. That is to say, he brought nothing; the presenter handled him with respect and graciousness. I just wanted him to stop talking. From this I received the takeaway that while life may offer one numerous opportunities to speak out, it offers us infinitely more opportunities to constructively shut the fuck up.

Velynn Brown and Harvey Garnett

This also taught me another thing. Vanport Mosaic is practicing what they call memory activism, which seems to be the idea that remembering what happened to those who came before us can actively reshape the present.

What I really learnt tonight that was valuable was not only all that I've maundered about but also this: listening to marginalized voices is resistance, and remembering their stories is a political act.

I recommend it to those who wonder what they can do in these times of great dexterity.

The Vanport Mosaic Project's online home is https://www.vanportmosaic.org/.

OryCon 39 and the Ghost of OryCons Past

3526.

The occasion of OryCon is, as one could probably expect after one reaches a certain point in their journey, an occasion to remember things and to evaluate how those things have changed, just like spending long quality time with any loved one in ones' life.

The location of Ory39 this year was the Red Lion Inn on the Columbia River, at Jantzen Beach. Jantzen Beach, for those who don't know, is essentially a neighborhood on Hayden Island, which is just within the boundaries of the city of Portland and the last bit of Oregon as you head north on I-5 before you enter Vancouver, Washington. It's seen many changes. For a very long time a very many years ago, it was one of Portland's then-more-numerous amusement parks; it was the place where the first traffic bridge from Portland into Vancouver was built (and is still rockin' away), and it had a front-row seat to Vanport.

In my time it's been the home of two hotels that loom large in Portland fannish history: one on the west side of the bridge, the other, on the east. And that's still the case.

When I began attending OryCons, back at the ninth iteration of same, it was being held at the one on the west side, then known as the Red Lion Columbia River. The one on the east side of the bridge was known as the Red Lion Jantzen Beach (it's rubric has flowered somewhat), and since most of the Orys happened at this hotel, that was was affectionately referred to as the other hotel. No further explanation was needed. That which was known as the Red Lion Columbia River began and ended life as the Thunderbird, which was a local chain based here in Portland (it's original edition, between Interstate Avenue and the Willamette River adjacent to the Memorial Coliseum, is what gave that dead end street there, N Thunderbird Way, it's name).

The Red Lion Columbia River/Thunderbird was a cool hotel to have an SF convention at. It, with it's five room wings extending like pincers to the west and east of the main hotel building, even reminded me of a spaceship. And in the early days, me and The Wife™ entered the hotel on Friday afternoon and didn't leave until Sunday afternoon, so it was pretty much the same thing as.

Mapquest tends to update on some levels slower than Google Maps on the satellite view. You load that into MQ and zoom in, and here is what you see.

That is just a cool layout, as I said. Walking the corridors linking the five wings, which were all named for local features, was like traversing a sort of space station.

In the interim since the last OryCon was held there, the property has seen some adventure. Around 2003, the Red Lion sold off the property, and it simple became the Thunderbird again. In 2005, it closed for good. In 2012, most of it burned to the ground, taking a whole lot of memories with it.

But part of it still stands, and that's the part that really is cosmically hilarious. It's still a hotel. A Rodeway Inn, as a matter of fact.

Those last two wings are still in business. They even have the names of the old wings up on the outside: Multnomah Wing, St. Helens Wing.

We drove around it on Sunday on our way out from our end of 'con. There's a new lobby area ... it was the ground floor lobby on the Multnomah Wing back in the day ... and they've built a new entrance. Driving around the back side, though, it's hard not to remember the rest of the hotel attached to it ... and the good times it held.

And now, OryCon's home is what we used to call the other hotel, perhaps illustrating that axiom that implies that while you can return to whence you came, you can never really go home again - but, all you really need is now, anyway.

And so it goes.

[pdx] Portland 2004 vs Portland 2016: Compare and Contrast

3325.

Naturally, having snapshots from back in the day and now currently, even if it's an unadvantageously-lit first-pass, invite comparisons. Here are the two photos, side-by-side orothogonally:

Some comparisons kind of jump out at you. The red brick-colored building there in the front and center, 1 SW Columbia, has a new companion immediately to the right; it's a shiny block of ice now blocking the view of the US Courthouse (the building with the curved roofline); the area of horizon between the Wells Fargo Tower and the Portland Plaza (the two buildings closest to the left of frame) has partially been populated with some of the rash of new apartment towers populating old Portland. You can even see the top of Park Avenue West (it's directly to the left of the flag on top of 1 SW Columbia).

Number and name the changes, friends. Portland's evolving, no matter what we think of it. 

[pdx] The Past Tense of Hung Far Low

3180.

This can be found at the corner of NW 4th Avenue and Couch Street, one block north of the Chinatown Gate:

It's notable for a couple of reasons.

About half a decade back, this sign matched the reality. Moreover, it was in a sad state. That supporting structure there was of a frailty, and the whole thing had pretty much become the Damoclesian sword of NW 4th and Couch, ready to transfix and/or obliterate any random pedestrian. The sign was perforce removed and refurbished, and successfully crowdfunded back into its rightful place above that corner of Chinatown.

It no longer has neon, but it's never looked better. Close examination of the sign gives delightful continuing gifts to the viewer, from the lovingly-restored type to the delightfully-detailed pagoda architecture of the sign's capital. Like some parts of Portland, though, it represents not the Portland that is, but the Portland that was.

Hung Far Low, the restaurant, still exists. Like a great deal that used to characterize what I remember as Portland, it's removed to the more affordable part of town, the Heavy Eastside. Some say it starts at 82nd Avenue, but my dividing line is a north-south line going more or less through the summit of Mount Tabor. West of that line, you're in Portlandia; east, more the real world. And HFL is out here, now, in a low-slung building on the northeast corner of SE 82nd and Division that has vague art-deco touches and was once home to a place called 88 Hongs.

They're calling that area of 82nd the Jade District now, which causes me torn feelings, because I don't like it when things move on in this way. I decidedly like having a center of culture like this much closer to me, though in return for that I sense that Chinatown is slowly evolving from an actual name with true resonance into a insincere brand for a certain area of Portland that used to be Chinatown but really is only that in name … kind of like, at Disneyland, Futureworld isn't really in the future, it just pretends to be. Trading on palimpsest charm to attract partiers on weekend nights.

At least we still have the Republic Café and the House of Louie and a few social clubs and a place or two that still evokes the down and gritty nature that that area had as recently as a decade ago.

But how long will those be there?

[PDX] Joe Vithayathil: The Latter-Day Frank Bonnema

3127.

Old-school Portlandia, pure and simple.

Those of you who have any recollection about Back-in-the-Day around these parts know about Portland Wrestling. You are no doubt aware of modern pro-wrestling, with its flash and gloss and pyrotechnics, and its acknowledgement of kayfabe-as-dramatic-storyline.

I can't really get into it. I remember pro-wrestling as-it-was … regional circuits, a working-man's pastime at the fairground or at the armory, and every week, without fail, on KPTV-12, late at night on Saturday … it was Portland Wrestling. It was the kind of show that your babysitter would let you stay up much later than you should be (and don't tell Mom) to watch. Hailing from the Portland Sports Arena (which was a converted bowling alley, I'm told, up on North Chautauqua Blvd), we got a weekly diet of Tom Peterson Xonix TVs, Playboy Buddy Rose, Rowdy Roddy Piper when he was comin' up … and Frank Bonnema.

He didn't host Portland Wrestling. He was Portland Wrestling.

Joe Vithayathil, a/k/a Joe V, KPTV's feature reporter, is also a wrestling geek from 'way back. He is right now living the dream. He hosted the recent re-incarnation of Portland Wrestling, known as Portland Wrestling Uncut, which has been on hiatus for far too long. And he's still working it … we understand that he's debuted a book about Lynn Denton.

Those of you suitably informed will know this man as THE GRAPPLER:

Yours truly is the author (well, co-author technically) of Grappler: Memoirs of a Masked Madman. It’s the autobiography of my good friend Lynn Denton, better known to the pro wrestling world as “The Grappler”. As I have discussed before on this blog, I was a wrestling nerd for decades, dating all the way back to the mid-80s. In 2012, a childhood dream came true (at the age of 36) when I was given the opportunity to work on a local wrestling show with Lynn- who everyone calls Lenny- and WWE Hall of Famer Roddy Piper. I became close with both men, and it was clear to me that Lenny had a story to share with the world.

Like I said, livin' the dream.

Joe has a blog posting up about it all here: http://gdojoe.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/look-ma-i-wrote-a-book/.  He's working hard at following in the footsteps of Bonnema, and while they broke the mold when they made that guy. I'd say Joe has the passion to make himself the modern-day image of the man.

As Katherine Dunn proved, writing about warriors in the squared circle can be seen as poetry on its own. I certainly wish the best for this effort.

[pdx] The Legend of Piccolo Park

3081.

Just about everyone reading this may have heard of something called a piccolo. In orchestra, it's a half-size flute that plays an octave higher than written, though in Italian, the instrument is called an ottavino.

This is probably due to something being lost in translation. Outside of Italy, piccolo means piccolo. Inside of Italy, piccolo means small. The long-time Portland toy store, Piccolo Mondo, translates to 'small world'. And so on.

In Portland particularly, Piccolo is a park whose size befits its diminutive name. It stretches between SE 27th and 28th Avenues, and is midway between SE Division and Clinton Streets. It lays in a place where SE Ivon Street would be, if it ran through. It marks an especial place where something would have run through, had a slightly earlier generation of Portlanders not done something about it.

The following I'm about to relate has been gleaned from years of reading and absorbing. The gentle reader is going have to take my word for this, as I have no references to share. That said, here goes:

Back in the 1970s, Portland was set to go on developing a city-girdling grid of freeways. Particularly pertinent (and iconic of a sea-change in Portland growth) was the Mount Hood Freeway. This brobdingnagian monster was set to diverge southeastward from the east end of the Marquam Bridge, following the diagonal portion of SE Division Street, laying between Division and Clinton until about SE 42nd Avenue, swerving south to SE 52nd and Powell, and obliterating Powell Blvd from SE 52nd Avenue all the way out to I-205. Traces of the freeway that was to be can be seen if you know where to look. SE Powell Blvd's design from 52nd out to 82nd takes advantage of the fact that the strip on the south side of the boulevard was vacated in anticipation of freeway construction; that's what all those off-street parking areas that the cross-avenues feed into are doing there.

The only bit that you can find west of there, aside from the stub ramps from the eastside approach to the Marquam Bridge, though, are in this neighborhood …

SE 28th Avenue at Piccolo Park, looking south. This would have
been about the median of I-80N (later I-84) had the Mount
Hood Freeway been built.

 … and it would have went through this piece of property:

The SE 28th Avenue entrance to Piccolo Park.
This would have been a freeway.

According to my measurements on Google Maps Classic, the frontage on SE 28th Avenue is about 150 feet; that on the SE 27th Avenue side is about 100. Three house lots were acquired and cleared for the freeway-that-never-was; then the project died the death, its funds going toward regional transit, eventually toward MAX, and burnishing Portland's reputation as one of the front lines in the freeway revolts of the 1960s and 70s and helping establish our reputation as a smart-growth Mecca.

But without a freeway to run through it, what to do?

What we always do around here. Grow a park in it.

A small park. Un piccolo parco. And, instead of a raging freeway, we have neighborhoods, funky places to go, and a park where a cute young couple and their dog can hang out …

… where public art includes a sundial with the gnomon broken off …

… a totally adorable compass rose with unfinished jigsaw puzzle detail …

… and what has to be the most exquisite hopscotch setup I have ever seen.

 Today's Piccolo Park could have been six lanes of traffic, but, instead, it's plants and flowers …

… grass and dappled sunlight …

… and flowers attracting bees. These particular ones the bumblebees were totally nuts about; I couldn't get a picture of the bees, they were too busy and having too much of a good time macking on that sweet, sweet nectar …

… I'll tell this much though … those rear shanks on those bees were absolutely loaded with pollen. they were making hay …

… while the sun shines, and the spring moon came out. I couldn't help but look up; I took even more pictures of the tree tops than this, so very many, but the  light diffusing through the trees made for the most luminous green. I couldn't help but snap away.

While I adore the gray skies and cool days, I was ready for this fair weather. It was fine, and there was something for everyone …

… including that little guy who. but for some sane heads about forty-odd years ago, wouldn't be here, either.

[pdx,map] 84 Years Of Portland Mapping

3022.

… are on display, fanned out in this picture:

The oldest one, in the upper-left-hand corner, which has the words GUIDE MAP visible, is from 1928. The one in front, red with the word SHELL on it in stacked type, is from 1939. I've collected them over the years from a variety of sources.

I'm thinking of going through them, one-by-one, and commenting on the interesting bits of each one. I already have some commentary on the 1928 map (complete with pictures) which can be read and seen.

They are, of course, amongst my proudest and most dear possessions, this collection. They tell an interesting story of Portland's growth.

[pdx] Address Nerd™ Mystery Theatre: The Case of the Henry Thiele Waffle Club

2822.Got sent something that was a real stumper, folks, in a good way … but still inscrutable.

Got an email a couple of days ago from one David Buettner, who had stumbled upon this chronicle in aid of trying to untangle a mystery.

Everyone with a smattering of Portland history (especially of the culinary kind) has probably heard of Henry Thiele. Henry's was a restaurant that was lodged in the point at the five-cornered intersection that was where NW Westover Road met up with West Burnside Street, NW 23rd Avenue, and SW Vista Avenue. It was a landmark in architecture (see this picture) as well as in food (the German-style pancakes were reportedly legend). But the history of Portland has it writ large that Henry's was at NW Westover and West Burnside.

But then David throws me a curveball, looking like this:

photo courtesy David Buettner

This, I'm told by David, is the back of a small mirror, advertising (rather scrumptiously) the Henry Thiele Waffle Club of all things. The history of Henry Thiele is, sadly, something not much written, if at all; the part that says he had a location on SW 10th Avenue or SW 11th Avenue is pretty much invisible.

My particular task was to help David figure out where those address might have been. Remember the old Portland address pattern, on which I've commented oft perforce &c &c, and you'll remember that any numbered street without a directional is south of Ankeny/Burnside/Washington; this would therefore put this in what we would say is the downtown core today; SW 10th Avenue was '10th Street' and SW 11th Avenue was '11th Street' prior to the Great Renaming of 1930.

Moreover, the building numbers amounted to 20-to-the-block, instead of today's 100-to-the-block. So 107 - 10th Street actually winds up, most likely, being between Alder and Washington or between Stark and Washington. So, we have an idea of where that address might lie, down to about a 1-block possibility.

But again, the real thing that's making us grind our teeth here is that we simply cannot find any trace, so far, of the existence of anything called the Henry Thiele Waffle Club. Particularly intriguing is the dual address on adjacent streets which could suggest a business which fronted on two downtown streets.

Anyhow, this is a call for any history-addicted Portlander or Address Nerd to come to the aid of his … country … or something. Does anyone who might stop by here know anything about Henry Thiele Waffle Club? Any information would be gratitudinous, and is meant to be shared. Here's a chance for us to explore a corner of Portland history heretofore unexplored.

Into Henry Thiele With Gun and Camera, as 'twere.

Leave your exploratory notes in the comments, bitte sehr.

[pdx] Presenting The César E Chávez Blvd Blades (with Bonus Beech Street)

2312.As I mentioned yesterday, I was going to have César E Chávez Blvd blades for posting today. And I do try to live up to my promises. Here we go.

The unveiling and a ceremony happened in front of the Central Christian Church, 1844 SE César E Chávez Blvd, at the cross street of SE Stephens Street. Across the street is another church, the Temple of Praise, and nothing against the Central Christian Church, but it made a much more attractive backdrop (and it was easier to lens the pics from the former's parking lot, actually …)

The new Blades are the recently-evolved Type 3's, and the same sensitivity to leading, kerning, and tracking are evident. That's still a good looking Clearview sign, dang it!

The type is the right size, easy to read, aware of its baselines, and the generic and the block index align very nicely. This is a tightly-designed piece.

The signs will co-exist on SE 39th Avenue for the next five years, as per standard PDX practice. The buzz I heard (I thought it was via Mayor Sam's twitter stream, but I'm wrong, it seems) is that they'll come down and be sold or auctioned off for charity's sake. I'll look for confirmation of that.

Despite the ballyhoo of the signs being installed "from Hollywood to Hawthorne", they were only installed at one place each in Hollywood and Hawthorne. The above is Hawthorne's intstallation. The following two are from the so-far sole Hollywood installation, the overheads at the Broadway/Sandy/39th plenum, just north of the Banfield Freeway:

This is the overhead looking west on NE Broadway from CEC. Yet another evolution for Portland street blades: The overhead blade looks like the car-level blade – note the formatting of the generic and the block index, and the directional:

A very high-information sign, indeed. If you go south on NE 37th Avenue, just a couple blocks west, and approach the traffic distrbutor that encourages you to choose either Halsey Street eastbound or CEC soutbound, you'll now notice the directional sign points to César E Chávez Blvd South, and they're all in Clearview now.

Yes, I luves Clearview. Sosumi. I'm a type obsessive as well as a street blade obsessive.

Moreover, the inclusion of the accute accents impart a definited sense of sophistication. One of the things I regret about English is no diacritics, no umlauts, no accents. Well, just write about CEC Blvd, and you have them (Fellow sign obsessive Ben Lukoff also reacted positively, and he, too, has a good eye).

Oh, yes, the bonus: the Type 3s are up at the corner of NE 57th Ave and Beech Street, too:

Actually, this is along the side of 57th along the cemetery fence, but you can't miss it. An embarrassment of riches today, for sure – history no matter which way you look at it, and attractive, grown-up-city street blades slowly but surely populating the best city in the world … my home, Portland, in the state of my birth, Oregon.

O yea.

Technorati Tags: Cesar E Chavez Blvd, CEC Blvd, Portland, Oregon, Hollywood District, Hawthorne District, Street Blade Gallery, Street Blades, Sign Design, Clearview, Typography

[Address_Nerd] Seeking Cesar E Chavez Blvd

2307.I've been keeping a keen eye out for the blades going up to begin the evolution over on 39th Avenue to remake it over to SE/NE Cesar E Chavez Blvd.

Whether you like it or now, it's going to be part of city history now. The warp and the woof.

You know what would be keener than the eye I'm keeping out for them? If I could somehow be the first Portlander to get a picture of the first new CECB blade going up. I heard there was one over by SE 39th and Belmont or Taylor or somesuch, but no joy there.

Anybody know?

Anybody heard anything?

Just saying.

Just -ah- throwin' that one out there.

Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, Cesar E Chavez Blvd, Portland Street Names, 39th Avenue, PDX

[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.

Technorati Tags: PDX, PDX History, PDX Commercial History, Tom Peterson, Tom Petersons and Gloria's Too, PDX Kitsch

Kudos: LostOregon In The Oregonian Today!

2091.LostOregon has long been a favorite of mine: John Chilson pursues Oregon history of the 20th Century via old ads, postcards, and other ephemera with a single-minded passion that puts even this Oregon native to shame.

We should all care more about our shared histories and the memories that make modern Oregon, Oregon.

Well, today, one of my favorite Oregonian writers (Peter Ames Carlin, whose command of the english language has made me smile in admiration more than once), takes on the proprietor of LostO and shows us what makes him tick.

Proper payoff for someone who obviously cares about where we all have been, and does it in such an entertaining way.

Time wasted at LostO is actually time well spent, and I recommend it highly, and not just because I was one of the first people he linked to when he set it up, way back when as Stumptown Confidential. Good times.

Congratulations, John!

Technorati Tags: Portland, Oregon, Oregon History, Portland History, LostOregon, Stumptown Confidential, John Chilson

Excellent Vintage Rotating Sign Still Spins at 42nd And Harrison In Milwaukie

2083.Down in Milwaukie for an errand today, the ridgetop area about SE 42nd Avenue/SE Harrison Street/SE King Road, by the gorgeous new Safeway store there, and at the gas pump, I found myself looking at a vintage bit of corner sign design.

The building on the SE corner of SE 42nd and Harrison has a Papa Murphy's Pizza store and Nisbett's Jeweler's. The main display area is what the call a "trilon" these days (portmanteau of "triangle" and "pylon", of which Papa Murphy's has two of the three sides and the jewelery shop, the third. Get a look at this little vintage specimen:

The thing has little lights all over it: all round the disc that is impaled upon the spike at the top, and three big ones at each corner of the advertising trilon, giving the whole thing this 60s/pop-sci-fi/UFO/Jetson's feel. It could use a coat of paint on the spike, but it's in otherwise good repair and is twirling away (unlike many which, through neglect or necessity, are left to swivel in the breeze as the electricity becomes too expensive or the drive breaks down and is left unrepaired).

Just this sweet little thing.

As I was recording this, an employee of the Papa Murphy's came out and asked me what's up, and I told her why I was pointing the camera. She smiled at that, and explained how the manager apparently saw to it that the sign was kept in repair.

So, hey, manager of Papa Murphy's at 42nd and Harrison in Milwaukie Oregon; good on you. You made me smile today.

Vintage Signs, Commercial Signs, Revolving Signs, Retro Sign design, Portland, Milwaukie, Oregon

Fairley's Pharmacy: Classic Drugstore Style, Classic Typography

2079.After the events of the last posting I continued westward down Sandy Boulevard ... because Sandy's awesome, yo.

Just west of 74th and Sandy is the center of the Roseway District ... a big sprawling thing were NE Sandy Blvd, NE 72nd Avenue, and NE Fremont Street come together. As locals know, the diagonal travel of NE Sandy Blvd makes for some cooler-than-cool block shapes which give us little wedges and flatiron-shaped buildings (note: you can view the photos bigly by going to my Posterous account and clicking on the pixs!).

NE 72nd/Fremont/Sandy, Looking East. Downtown
Roseway District. Fairley's Rx on the point.

That little two-story flatiron in the center of the pic is Fairley's Pharmacy. It's a little classic, it's been around Portland for decades, and still has a soda fountain and prescription deliveries (as well as espresso and a place to hang out and read books ... and Free WiFi. Because this is PDX, yo).

The place caught my eye because they are working overtime to keep the old-fashioned feel, and what really caught my eye was the apparently-recently-refurbished building signage, which has the classic look and feel.

The signage wraps round the building to the Fremont Street side (on the right of the above picture) which makes you think of the 1940s when buildings on corners all seemed to do that.

And there's Coca-Cola style FTW! Classic street typography, well-executed, not too much or too little, there's a real eye to the totality of art here. It looks classic – not dated.

It's not hard to find. NE 72nd and Sandy at Fremont. Stop in sometime. They got good sodas.

Technorati Tags: Portland, Portland Street Scenes, Roseway District, Fairley's Pharmacy, Classic Typography, Classic Signage, Coca-Cola Style, Display Typography

New Street Blades at SE 37th & Stark, New Font, Not Just Capitals!

2078.To a font geek, this find is quite exciting. And if you use signs at all, you need to keep an eye out, Tex, because what you're about to see is the future of highway sign fonts.

About a week ago we flashed past SE 37th Avenue and Stark Street in the middle of the night, and I caught it out the corner of my eye. It didn't register at first ... but were the letter forms on that sign actually in mixed case, rather than all uppers?

I didn't believe my memory at first, but I couldn't get that out of my mind. And then we went by the assembly again, and sure enough, it was. But it looked more designed than the typical, evenly-stroked, mechanical fonts that usually get used.

Here, see what I mean:

Let's get a closer look at the Stark Street blade:

Do you see what I mean here? The letters have some art to them. The stroke has thick-and-thin. It doesn't look like any sign font you've seen before.

Here's the 37th Avenue blade:

Notice the variation on the curves on the 3, the sweep of the downstroke of the 7 (and the mixed case of the ordinal superscript (Th)), which seems kind of awkward). This is not your father's sign font.

What it is a new font called Clearview. Here's the pith of what Wikipedia has to say about it (follow the link to see an illustration of it):

Clearview is the name of a humanist sans-serif typeface family for guide signs on roads in the United States. It was developed by independent researchers with the help of the Texas Transportation Institute and the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, under the supervision of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

The standard FHWA typefaces, developed in the 1940s, were designed to work with a system of highway signs in which almost all words are capitalized. The designers of Clearview sought to create a typeface adapted for mixed-case signage, initially expecting it would be based on an existing European sans serif typeface.[1] Instead, using a similar weight to the FHWA fonts, a new font was created from scratch. Two key differences are much larger counter spaces, the enclosed spaces in letters like the lower case "e" or "a," and a higher x-height, the relative height of the lower case "x" to the upper case "X." Smaller counter spaces in the FHWA fonts reduced legibility, particularly when the letters glowed from headlight illumination at night.

So, that's the story there. Clearview is going to be seen more and more along America's highways as the 'aughties close and the teens begin, and I believe I may have turned up the first example of its use in Portland.

SCORE! 10 of 10!

Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, Portland Street Blades, SE Stark Street, Laurelhurst Park, Oregon, Portland Street Scenes

Street Blade Safari: New Design Up at 74th And NE Sandy Blvd

2077.For many reasons, I haven't been on streetblade safari for a while. Did it this morning on a whim. Found two great new ones, and because they have different thrusts, we'll do them one at a time.

First, I stumbled on the new design at NE 74th Avenue and Sandy Boulevard, north side of the street, in the Rose City neighborhood (isn't it a peach we have a Rose City neighborhood in the Rose City? Anyway!).

Here's the NE 74th Avenue blade:

And here's an full-on view of the Sandy Blvd blade:

Remember now, the block index is the block that the crossing street cuts the avenue at. In this case, it's not the 3600 block of Sandy Blvd, but the 3600 block of NE 74th Avenue that Sandy cuts into it at.

This corner is notable for two interesting bits of roadside architecture. One is on the north side of Sandy, on the triangular block defined by NE Sandy Blvd, 74th Avenue, and Beech Street. Taking up most of the block is a telling bit of tavern construction that goes back rather a long time, has gone under many names – latterly known as "The Pirate's Cove". Most of the east end of the building is shaped like a giant jug:

The other one is considerably newer, on the opposite (SW) corner of the intersection. It's a office and retail strip that has the most interesting roof ornament on the turretlike corner, and sits atop it like a cocked cap:

It's a funny thing. In the good way.

Technorati Tags: Street Blade Gallery, Portland Street Blades, NE Sandy Blvd, Rose City Neighborhood, Rose City Park, Oregon, Portland Street Scenes