Mill Ends Park 2 Has A Cottage Now

3651

So, at that gore point, where Southeast Thorburn Street devolves into Southeast Stark and Washington (or where Southeast Stark and Washington unite to become Thorburn, depending on ones' direction of travel, philosophy, or some mixture of the two), I wrote of the continuing presence of a 'guerilla' park emulating the virtues of Portland's world-famous Mill Ends Park ... Mill Ends Park 2.

There've been developments. A development, to be specific.

Some blithe spirit has graced the comma-shaped traffic island with a small, brightly painted hut for whatever fae denizens should be conceived to be living there. Some brightly and intricately painted stones, which defined a path from the sign to the hut but have now been scattered about by the elements are also there.

It's interesting that whoever has temporal suzerainty over this patch of public way has been cool about it. It existed for some days before the coronavirus came as an unwelcome guest and didn't get taken down immediately; presumably whoever is In Control There thought it rather delightful along with the rest of us.

Well, this last week, the small hut and the stone-limned path showed up. Unlike the sine qua non version in the median of Southwest Naito Parkway at the foot of Taylor Street downtown, there is no backstory to it. Some miniature developer kind of bashed it in there, and since we don't have a generation of leprechauns to provide a backstory, one could perhaps assume that it's a faery houseshare, a elfin AirBNB, perhaps.

They probably didn't appreciate me snapping pictures uninvited without so much as a "how d'you do", but sometimes one must take the risks. It must be said that I, too, have affection, so that must be holding me in some kind of advantageous stead.

And, for those who are wondering, no, I don't know what the rates are. You're on your own there, pilgrims.

Mill Ends Park 2, Side of Olivia

3629

So, to show that not everything in these times of dexterity are dismal, I noted a thing that was meant to be temporary was still there and not in my photo library yet, so I went and got it, and a guest star besides.

Mill Ends Park is one of the most Portlandest things that ever Portlanded in Portland. Originally a post hole, it was first cared for by a columnist for the late, great Oregon Journal newspaper whose home was, at the time, a very large, white, double-masted building that vaguely resembled an art deco cruise liner where Tom McCall Waterfront park is now. Dick Fagan populated it with leprechauns and named if after his column, and eventually the hole, in the median of what we now call SW Naito Parkway at the foot of Taylor Street, became a local legend and then an official city park.

A 2-foot wide city park.

And over time small plants would be there and people would arrange little figures of people and dinosaurs and such and it was all very kind and fun. But sometime, about two years ago, some chowderhead cut the small tree that was growing there, out. And we all found out and it became one of the most Portlandest stories that ever Portlanded in the media, and everyone had the sad about it.

Somehow, during that time, almost as though in response to the destruction, someone got the idea that  the west side of the Willamette shouldn't have all the fun. And thus, in an asphalt island in the gore point of where SE Thorburn Street, a main route around the shoulder of Mount Tabor feeding East Burnside Street traffic down into downtown Montavilla, split into the couplet of SE Stark and Washington streets there, someone placed two planters, a sign, and a wooden sword in a wooden stone, and we got this:

The sign, while it looks kinda official, is not; Portland Parks and Recreation have said as much. But they're good sports about it all, and haven't disturbed it, and neither has anyone else.

And here's the fair Olivia, alongside:

Mill Ends Park 2, and Olivia: both actual size.

And so it goes.