[pdx_liff] Vintage Taxi Poster, The Fox and Hounds

3310.

Seen on the corkboard and The Fox and Hounds in Old Town (simply smashing burgers and fish and chips) was the following vintage poster:

How vintage is that?

1. You didn't have to dial "503".
2. Dig that Safeco logo.
3. Dig that Radio Cab logo.
4. The poster has the addendum 'OR WALK', and no Uber or Lyft-based snark. 

This thing is a straight-up collector's item.

[PDX] 36 Pit Wildfire Morning From Portland

3142.

Over the past several days, something has come to the west side of the Cascades that not many of us would ever have thought to see: A wildfire.

They're calling it the 36 Pit Fire for reasons I'm hoping they'll eventually explain (on the edit: a commenter in my GooglePlus stream, +Merrilee Gilley, posted a link to a KOIN 6 News report explaining just how this wildfire-and others-got their name), and during the last few days, the prevailings have been blowing it down into the Willamette Valley, casting a dull pall from Portland down to past Salem. It's located, more or less, just east of the end of the North Fork Reservoir, which is about 5 miles southeast of the town of Estacada, which is about 30 miles southeast of the city center of Portland.

According to a Google Map-based estimate, the nearest part of the sprawling fire is about 27 miles from Home Base's front doorstep.

What residents there are in that area are being evacuated, and people in the town of Estacada itself are feeling a bit nervous. The Governor has invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act, which allows the State Fire Marshal to draft more structural firefighters to help. So, yeah … shizz has gotten real up at the end of State Hwy 224.

Down here, in the valley, at a safe remove, we who have healthy lungs and are out at just the right time get a show. Sunrise today was exquisite …

These were taken with the Canon simply pointing in the direction of the light.

The only processing was done to bring them into a size more appropriate for posting.

It's like shining a very bright light through nacre. And, if things stay lucky, there's not too much of this left to go.

So, if I can be allowed a soft'n'corny sentiment, I wish those who fight the fire and those who have property in harm's way well. 

[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] PDX Street Sign Shop, Ca. 1916

2240.Fellow street sign blogger Eric Fischer, whose San Francisco work I've praised, has done me a definite solid and dropped a very beautiful thing my way.

As I may have alluded to in another post somewhere, Portland's street  blades have looked different. From, I'd estmate, around 1900 through the middle third of the 20th Century, PDX Street blades where these indesctructable iron things, with white and enamel paint, which looked like this:

As you can see, it's very utilitarian. Blocky, almost-military letterforms – not graceful, but very very readable.

In a recent comment to the Cyclotram's P13 Stark Street Milestone, fellow street sign blogger from San Francisco (whose work I enjoy) Eric Fischer pointed me to a most amazing publication, in the public domain and available in its entirety on Google Books. It was in this book, Municpal Engineering Practice, by A. Prescott Folwell and published in 1916 by Wiley and Sons (a book generally about designing and laying out cities), that I found the following view – the inside of Portland's sign shop, ca. 1915 or so:

You have to embiggen this to see it in its full glory, to do this, go to Posterous here and click on the photo (which you can also download) or click on the photo above.

Lined up along the bottom there are signs for E. 70th ST. N (today's NE 70th Avenue), E. 72nd ST. N., 50th AVE. SE (today's SE Raymond Street), and 41st AVE SE (today's SE Gladstone Street). I also see a rather big blade, reading (on two lines) PATTON ROAD/COUNTY ROAD, and there are signs for CRYSTAL SPRINGS BLVD, WISTARIA AVE, and possibly a deprecated style for WASHINGTON ST.

To go over it real quick again, before the Great Renaming of 1933, numbered streets east of the Willamette and north of Burnside not only carried the East prefix because of that but also the North suffix to extend west-side naming practice east in a uniform way; therefore 11th Street east of the Willamette and north of Burnside would be EAST 11TH STREET NORTH. The avenues suffixed SE were in the area south of Powell and east of E. 39th Avenue which, for reasons even not yet clear, had number congruent to today's street blocks going out in both directions, though avenues ran east-west and streets north-south: therefore, 1916's 50th Avenue SE would be today's SE Raymond Street, which is the 5000 block (50th standard street name south of East Burnside) and 41st Avenue SE would be SE Gladstone Street – today's 4100 block (41st standard street name south of East Burnside).

The viewer can no doubt find some things that I've missed, and it's all interesting and good.

Thanks Eric … you definitely da man!

To view the page directly and download your own PDF of this book, surf to the following:

http://books.google.com/books?id=7AJLAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22street%20name%20signs%22&pg=PA295#v=onepage&q=%22street%20name%20signs%22&f=false

Technorati Tags: sign design, street sign design, vintage PDX, PDX Geography, PDX Street Blades, Portland Oregon, Portland history

[pdx] The Tom Peterson & Gloria's Too! Coffee Mug

2216.Those who know me know that one of my cherished (and most unattainable) dreams would be to find, at a bargain price, The Tom Peterson Alarm Clock.

That we shelve to the status of a cherished dream still, however, on Wednesday, in a vintage shop on upper Hawthorne, me and The Wife™ found this little darlin' for just a couple of bucks:

And, yes, it's in use right this second. Yummy coffee!!!

(Yes, I am a connoisseur of the history of Tom Peterson. Just put that string in the search box up top and you'll see my compiled notes on the subject).

Technorati Tags: Tom Peterson's, Tom Peterson, Tom Peterson & Gloria's Too!, PDX History, PDX Commercial History, PDX Visual History

[pdx] The Interstate Bridges From See Level

2213.Take a walk with Cyclotram's atul666:

And read all about it here. A very close and needful look at a very historic structure.

It's easy to forget how important to the mid-20th Century Portland-Vancouver population a way to get across the river was.

Technorati Tags: Interstate Bridge, Portland, Vancouver, Interstate Bridges, I-5, Oregon, Washington

[design] Separated At Birth: The 2001: A Space Odyssey EVA Pod and The New MAX Green Line?

2194.The design sense and style are certainly the same. See how the design zeitgeist works?

I'm tellin' ya, man, that's kinda eerie.

It'll all be fun and games until Frank Poole gets stranded at Clackamas Town Center.

Technorati Tags: MAX Green Line, MAX, TriMet, Transit Design, Light Rail, Portland

[pdx] Hawthorne: Tales Of Typographic Boulevards

2188.Portland's Hawthorne Blvd, at about 7PM, on an overcast, famously-Oregon summer evening:

Looking west from SE 47th Avenue, just where I took the sign blade pictures in the previous missive. Yes, it is gloomy and kind of dark. After the hellish heat wave Oregon just endured, you won't find me complaining. Actually, too much clear, bright weather makes me edgy. But then, I was born here in Oregon.

A couple of examples of typography and architecture that contributes to the famous Hawthorne feel and atmosphere caught my eye.

JaCiva's Chocolatier was founded by a man named Jack and his wife, Iva, and it's pronounced that way. You may think you know Oregonized confectionary with Moonstruck, and it is good stuff, but for real local flavor, JaCiva's in the place. The logotype on the sign is completely designed here (I'd be surprised to find that was an actual typeface) and it uses the idea of soft graceful curves and swashes to impart a sense of luxury.

The type in the old Portland IMPACT community service center logo is Koch's famous Neuland, a font that gives the impression of hand-hewn craft. The simplicity of it, combined with the whimsy of the figures and the flat brown tone, deliver a message of humility and approachable help. The reader board's message of E HAVEMOVE RN EWA DD RESS . BURNSID delivers a message that is perhaps in code.

Portland IMPACT have in fact removed to a different address on E. Burnside and have updated their look and name. They are now Impact Northwest:

… the colorization fo the logo is inspired and fun, at least against a light background – the type's a little uninspired though – in my opinion.

Part of the charm of Hawthorne, as I alluded, is the architecture, and along the 4700 block, on the south side, are some charming old commercial fronts that I hope aren't replaced by condos any time soon:

The signage on the places are as eclectic as the variety of people you'll meet on Hawthorne. Hawthorne Vintage, there on the right, has a hand-done sign that is just fun with its funky type and bouncing color balls. Timbuktunes World Music has a mashup with type inspired by Art Deco, purple and green colors, going for tradition and non-tradition all in one fell swoop – and somehow, despite having two colors that you don't think would work together, they do. The CPA office on the far left – the type and presentation is staid and boring, but you don't want to be entertained by your CPA. You want them to be dependable, expected, and expert.

I know the type is hard to see in the photo. Go down there maybe and enjoy the atmosphere in person, yes? Maybe I'll be getting better photographs later on.

Finally, just a mysterious two-storefront building immediately west of that:

Isn't that wonderfully anonymous? The paint, put on for the sake of argument; the architectural touches, which suggest Art Deco; if you get up close, the transom-level windows have this wonderful frosted rippled glass which you used to find everywhere. Nothing special about this, but everything wonderful. This little building really captured my imagination.

All of the above can be found on upper Hawthorne Blvd between SE 47th and 48th Avenues.

Gloomy late afternoons in Portland, Oregon. Definitely nothing like them anywhere else.

Technorati Tags: Typography, Hawthorne Blvd, Portland Landscapes, Portland Street Scenes, Sign Design, Street Typography

[pdx] Why Is Portland OR Better Than Vancouver BC?

2182.Dave knows.

A half-megabuck for a liquor license in Canadiddia? Who knew?

Also: Unicorns? We haz them!

I'll stack whatever VanBC has to PDX's Unicorn Force any day of the friggn' week!

Technorati Tags: Portland, Vancouver, Cascadia, Unicorns, Portland Unicorn Burial Ground

[liff] Mother Goose And Grimm's Mike Peters Clearly Has Not Consulted Rod Hill

2168.If you saw today's Oregonian comics page, then you know that Goose and Grimm's artist, Mike Peters, has made PDX the … ahh, "butt" of a joke.

Copyright Mike Peters, used with Permission.
See the original at Grimmy.com (7/25/2009)

Oh, snap! I WISH maybe the sun wouldn't shine here this week. We've already had way too much of a good thing.

The joke has special piquancy given the fact that Rod Hill has emailed everyone on his list to warn us that the Greater Portland area is going to turn into an oven this next week.

What? You haven't gotten yourself on Rod's list? Do this thing, there.

Technorati Tags: Portland, Portland weather, Oregon weather, Mother Goose & Grimm, Mike Peters

[pdx] The Way Burgerville Rolls, Part 2

2163.Leave it to Burgerville USA to realize the potential of the so-called "roach coach"[1]. Via The Columbian:

On Thursday, the 24-foot-long Burgerville Nomad will take its maiden voyage, pulling away from parent company The Holland Inc.'s downtown headquarters and heading south to Portland's Waterfront Park. The decked-out kitchen will be used for community events and as a stand-in facility during restaurant remodels.

City of foodcarts, get ready for the mother of all food carts!

According to the article, if the Nomad works out (and I think it will) they'll move out more of them.

And while I am happy that BV is going to be scouting downtown Portland for a location, they really have to put one back down in Salem. They had one at the I-5/Market Street exit, but they took it out when the interchange was remodeled back in the 90s.

It would be a welcome bit of culture down there.

[1] Roach coach is only a term of artifice. There will be no actual roaches – of any kind.

Technorati Tags: Burgerville, Burgerville USA, The Holland, PNW Favorites

[pdx] Views Of The West End

2161.SW 13th Avenue, Stark Street, and West Burnside come together at this big plenum which used to anchor the west end of the gay club district. With PDXEagle up on N Lombard now, Club Portland gone, and the Pink Triangle becoming more metrosexual by the day, it's comforting to know that, for now anyway, the district still looks like a slice of old downtown Portland, the downtown Portland that I fell in sloppy love with when I first visited as a teenager out of Salem:

View it embiggened at Posterous here.

Another view I particularly enjoy is looking down West Burnside. Now, my camera does a pretty fine job, my Plastic Fantastic, the ViviCam 3705, but it's views like this that make me wish I could afford a nifty camera with telephoto, because street views like this are so much fun to play with:

View this one embiggened at Posterous.

It's just quintessentially downtown Portland. And I've always loved downtown Portland.

Technorati Tags: SW Stark Street, West Burnside Street, West End, Portland, Portland Street Scenes, Pink Triangle, Portland Photos

Another New Street Blade – On E Burnside

2148.One of the street blades we were out to get yesterday I missed putting in the big post a couple back, but there's also a new one on E Burnside.

This is East Burnside Street in the 9100 block, looking east. The car in the distance is just crossing the I-205 overpass.

Standing on the north side of the street at this point you are at the physical corner of East Burnside and NE 91st Place. Looking across the street, you can see this:

Atop that post, just visible in the foliage, is the street blade, mounted so as to identify the cross street to someone leaving NE 91st Place … though with all that foliate, we aren't quite saying "mission accomplished" here. However, it makes a first-class background for a close up picture:

The new sign, like the others we've been increasingly finding, is in the Clearview font.

The block index ought to be zero, and should read "00" in the upper right hand corner (which you'd read "zero-hundred" maybe). Although it is possible that it was deemed unnecessary to include a block number because it is the baseline and this is a well-known thing. Still, as a format-completist, I'd like to see the double-aught there.

Sign Safari: New Blades on outer Tibbetts and Taggart, And A Couple of Oddities

2145.We went on sign safari again today, and came up with some goodies, from one end of the east side to the other. New Street blades, with the new Clearview font, show how the new Portland street blade look is shaping up. We have a couple of oddities as well, one which proves an assumption we made earlier.

Not long ago, I don't remember why, I had an occasion to be along SE 162nd between Division and Powell, and caught a glimpse of the new blades in passing. Went back today, and here's what we got:

Zooming in for a nice, close look, we find that while the numbered avenue still seems to use the old-style glyphs:

… the named blade uses the new Clearview type (this is also kind of evident in the photo above):

The tracking amongst all the letters is rather appropriate, and nothing in the positioning of the glyps looks forced or awkward at all.

The ironic thing about this was, I had forgotten the name of the street, confusing it with another T-named street nearby – Tibbetts. I told The Wife™ we were going out to 162nd and Tibbetts to see the new blades. She wanted to do a little neighborhood cruising and we found our way to Tibbetts. What should we find at SE 167th Avenue and Tibbetts Street, of all things, but this:

Another catch! In constrast to the last blade set, whereas the blade for SE Tibbetts Street is in Clearview:

So, also is the numbered avenue blade:

The downstroke to the 7 is the dead giveaway where, but the subtle curves and tapers on all the glyphs should be obvious to students of the form.

This is additionally notable because it's the first one which is solidly away from any main thoroughfare. SE 167th and Tibbetts is in a sleepy corner of a remote SE neighborhood, which is still very charming, with mid 20th Century ranch-style houses and gently curving streets. Very pleasant area overall.

In the area, we also found an oddity. Street blades have been appearing on very narrow streets serving infill housing on greatly subdivided lots; these seem to typically be green glyphs on a white background, opposite the Portland standard. Given the look of the property this following street stub serves, we're pretty sure that these signs denote privately-maintained streets whose developers arranged to be integrated into the address grid for purposes of ease of location. This sign was seen along SE 162nd Avenue, between (as you might expect) Division and Stark Streets:

At least two notable differences are immediately apparent here. First of all, unlike any other sign of this type, the specific (HAWTHORNE) is larger than both the directional (SE) as well as the generic (CT). Situate as it is, we can safely assume that it was named as an extension to SE Hawthorne Blvd (it's the county standard to do things this way). Secondly, the post on which the single blade is mounted is not the round metal pipe, but rather more of a fence-post which is square in cross-section. Also, as you can tell by this photo:

It's built rather lowe to the ground. The city doesn't seem to mount blades this low without some sort of reason, which is usually apparent from the surroundings. There's no real reason to put the sign down this low – as a matter of fact, a taller pole would actually make it more visible. Also, something about the location of that sign within a private front-yard fence line strongly suggests that this is a private installation.

To close out this safari, how about something you may not have known: you're aware that any numbered street (except in Linnton) is an Avenue. How about one that's a Boulevard? For a while now, the section of NE 122nd Avenue north of Sandy, through Airport Way to Marine Drive, has been designated as such:

This blade is at the corner of NE 122nd and Marine Drive, but has been marked "NE 122nd Blvd". No apparent reason for this except, we guess, that 122nd north of Sandy very wide, high-capacity road serving the industrial flatland. However, though the signs along most of this stretch have it as Blvd, new signs going in at 122nd and Airport Way now denote 122nd Avenue, so maybe that designation is reverting.

Technorati Tags: PDX Signs, Portland Signs, Portland Geography, Sign Design, Typography, Portland Visual History, Street Blade Gallery

Hung Far Low: Finally, A Re-Erection Campaign That Doesn't Promise What It Can't Deliver!

2138.Some months back, a charming and representative piece of Portland visual design and history diappeared with the taking down of the landmark Hung Far Low Restaurant sign.

The vertical sign, which resembled a great majuscule letter I with the words HUNG FAR LOW down the spine, and advertising CHOP SUEY across the top and COCKTAILS across the bottom, and topped overall by a cute little stylized pagoda,(see it here, here and here), stood over the corner of NW 4th Avenue and Couch Street in Portland's Chinatown since at least the middle of the 20th Century. In 2007, the eponymous restaurant moved to the corner of SE 82nd and Division (where it now sports a much less memorable sign) but the sign remained. Between then the word COCKTAILS was reduced by some prankster to the word COCK, and all the words at the top and bottom were altered to read "EST. 1928" at the top and "BUILDING" at the bottom.

The years had taken their toll and the sign had become more of a sword of Damocles to some potentially unlucky pedestrian, thus in October 2007 the sign had to come down. It now rests in a "sign graveyard", reputedly in Scappoose.

There was always the intention of re-erecting the sign, but it's going to take $30,000 to get that done. So this blog, as indeed should every self-respecting Portland blog, am taking great pleasure in helping to spread the word that the Re-erection campaign to get the Hung Far Low sign back up over the corner of NW 4th and Couch is on.

I've visited the website and it's very clear and nice, and donations are priced so that everyone can get in on the act; there's a donation level as low at $10, so as soon as I can find me a tenner, I'm sending one along.

The address to view is: http://reerecthungfarlow.com/ .

Technorati Tags: PDX, Portland, Portland History, Portland visual history, PDX Chinatown, Hung Far Low