The Magic Inn Goes Away

4162It's Friday, and another bit of Old Portland goes away.

At 816 SE 122nd Avenue there has been a old-school Portland dive bar called the Magic Inn. I don't know how long it was open ... but has to have been decades. Probably set up by Lewis & Clark's Corps of Discovery for all I know. It seemed to be old-school-kicking it up to the last.

For a short time it was owned by the same group that owns Boss Hogg's (home of the Hawgarita, for those who were worried about homelessness for tackily-redubbed house signature beverages, don't worry, at least we have that covered) over on NE 102nd. They'd even painted it up with an exterior mural ... which went away before I quite dithering about taking a picture of it. Sic transit gloria. 

Today, when nearly home from coming in from work, SE 122nd and Stark, which is a bear of an intersection during that time of the commuted on the best of days, was backed up to 127th, and narrowing to a curb lane only. 

I wasn't really in the mood for it, but I went with the flow. So many times on Stark I was turned aside before I could see what the issue was in other traffic problems. I wanted to see what the deal was, this time.

At 122nd, Officer Friendly was diverting all traffic on to 122nd northbound. Couldn't go any farther west without detouring, but I could see that the building, just about 400 or 500 feet south of Stark at that point, was truly immolating. Three great streams of water were pouring from fire equipment onto the site, and smoke billowed up like as a volcanic eruption.

Getting back to the Bank of America's parking lot was a bit of a task; I must admit that I think I missed the most spectacular part. But what I saw when I finally could get there was pretty extraordinary.

 

 

The building is a total loss. Nothing to do but level the thing and sell it to a developer now, which may have been the thing all along, who knows. Some months ago, some small apartments on the same lot, toward the back, also burst into flames. Suffice it to say, Portland Fire Bureau investigators probably are looking at a job of work.

There was a lot of equipment there, to be sure. Three ladder trucks, two engines, and at least one maxillary support vehicle. 122nd and Stark rush-hour traffic were using all the back streets to get around it; northbound traffic SE 122nd passing Market were diverted to 130th, which was stacked from Stark all the way back past the David Douglast HS campus, which is a shade more than a half mile.

Here's a wider angle which gives an idea of how much equipment was on the scene

The Mr. Peeps Adult Superstore, which wss probably set up by a skeevy member of the Lewis & Clark party, was unscathed, as well as the former auto parts show just on the corner of 122nd and Morrison.

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

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

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

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

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

Dig, if you will, this picture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zidell Marine: The Last Of The Industrial South Waterfront

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Once upon a time there was no such a thing as escalating property values in a place we today call the South Waterfront, and instead of glittery if-you-have-to-ask-you-can't-afford-it shi-shi condo towers, there were things like this you see pictured hence.

 

Zidell Marine Company (ZMC as can be seen on the crane above) built barges. And, from the ways just south of the west end of the Ross Island Bridge, launched a great many of the ones that ply the waters of the American West Coast.

During the early 1990s, the Brown Eyed Girl and myself lived in an apartment just on the other side of the river from this, on SE 8th Avenue near Rhine, and we were in love with the urban sounds. McLoughlin Blvd, in the mornings, as the traffic was winding up for rush hour (which was more like just an hour back then) sounded like a rushing stream. And we could hear barges being launched from there in the middle of the night: a long horn, a brief moment of quiet, then a rather authoritative splash.

Now, it's the last corner of authentic industrial activity in the zu teuer South Waterfront area, and even now it's actually in an afterlife. Zidell Marine built its last barge in 2017, so that crane, the factory, and the property they're on are just awaiting its next life - undoubtedly as something for those somebodys who already have everything and talk in terms of leases and condos and e-vehicles and the like.

Northwest Portland, 2021

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Just a picture of the skyline of (mostly, now) residential inner NW Portland taken from the east end of the Steel Bridge. 

Yeah, this is one of those it's a whole new world now maunderings. 

About the only things that remain recognizable from before the year 2000 are the brick red apts down in front there, which date from the 1980s, and the iconic Union Station clock tower with its legendary GO BY TRAIN sign on the right. Thi high rise on the left, the shorter gabled roofs of the apartment silos to the right of that, indeed, all the lower roofs that seem to now cluster around Union Station's tower were, up through most of the 1990s, a rail yard that seemed ... well, eternal. 

The massive development in that area didn't seem so galloping when it was happening. I worked in that area, and it was most gradual. 

Those rearview mirrors really do make things look closer than they appear, don't they?

NW Thurman Street in 2007

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And now, a few throwback-images. These next three from 2007 ...

In 2007, the place I work for was based in industrial Northwest Portland ... well, it was then. I remember walking around getting a breath of Stadt luft on lunch breaks and such, wandering the edge of the rail yards when they were rail yards and not full of condo silos, and such. Of all the talk of old Portland evolving into new Portland and the Manhattanization of the city center, I must say that from my temporal viewpoint I got to watch development slowly creep that direction like rising sea levels from climate change.

I guess I should have known that the landscape was really about to change when the old tire warehouse across the street became a Montessori school. I wonder if the Dandy Warhol's clubhouse is still in the area and if it is ... congratulations to them. The lease on that thing must be astronomical by now. Courtney Taylor Taylor may have had to sell off one of his Taylors. 

Times are tough all around.

What I lay before you here is a view eastward down NW Thurman Street, looking from NW 19th Avenue. In those days, after hours, nobody went there. Then, eventually some people went there. Now everyone goes there. 

But then? This part of Thurman used to be a through-route with businesses and a tavern or two. In 2007, it was still something of a commercial interregnum.

Just ahead on the right was a place called Premier Gear Works, a commercial machine shop. I understand it's removed to Tualatin or somesuch, maybe Clackamas, I dunno. And it was so deserted that I could stand in the middle of this street pretty much as long as I wanted and compose to my heart's content on that old ViviCam 3705 (3.3 Mpx!) and not be in any danger from any traffic whatsoever. Up and above all this are the ramps tying I-405 and US 30 to the Fremont Bridge.

A thing that was already a relic at that time is just out of shot on the left. And that's something I will exhibit in the next entry.

Goneworth Chevytown

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The dive into the past continues. September of 2017. Somewhat happier times.

Along Southeast Grand Avenue, between Ankeny and Ash, there's a car dealership called Subaru of Portland. Back in the day, and up until that day, though, it was known as Wentworth Chevytown (Subaru was a sideline for a long time there though).

Through 2013, there was a big sign with 10-foot tall letters which flashed WENTWORTH CHEVYTOWN to the west side of the river. You can see a picture of that at The Oregonian's article of the demise of the sign here: https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2013/11/wentworth_chevytown_sign_comin.html.  That sign was a casualty of a number of things: the march of time, the development of the Portland Streetcar, et. al. And eventually, in 2013, the sign was retired. Eventually, Wentworth Chevytown removed to Wilsonville, only the Subaru dealership remaining and renaming.

But in 2017 it was still a little bit of Chevytown, and the sign over the used car division's lot across Grand from the main showroom defiantly stood to the last, it's oldjack letters recalling any number of car related business from childhood who had similarly-styled signage.

We went, and it was worth it.

Hey, we got this sweet picture.

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/.

The Old Joyce Hotel Sign

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The Wife™ has declared this photo to be Portland AF:

Well, it certainly is old Portland AF.

What this is is the sign for the old Joyce Hotel, over the corner of SW 11th Avenue and Harvey Milk Street (formerly Stark). And there is something evocative to the thing, the old flophouse sign, still there and still intact but for the stress of the years on the paint job, up against one of those classic downtown Portland street lamps, which I adore beyond sane reason.

It profoundly emotionally moved her, which is a thing that I'll be even amateur photographers like myself as well as pros are surprised; you never know which one of your compositions will grab someone by the heart.

And so that goes.

The Advent of SW Harvey Milk Street

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Southwest Stark Street is no more, kinda sorta, for a five-year transition period.

But the street blades honoring the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk are up now. And for the next five years, the street will wear both names on the signposts. This is how we transition street names here in Portland.

The proposal by the businesses along the street supporting it and detailed at The Harvey Milk Street Project  was to have the thirteen blocks of SW Stark Street renamed only, in honor of Harvey Milk who, in his highly visible position as a legislator in one of America's pre-eminent large cities was amongst the first openly gay people ever elected to such prominence, was assassinated in 1978. Also, for a period stretching roughly from the mid 1980s to the mid-2000's, that area stretching along Stark from approximately 11th Avenue to 13th Avenue was the hypocenter of Portland's gay culture.

The list of nightclub names still doubtlessly rings legendarily in the hearts and minds of Portlanders gay community: Club Portland, the Fish Grotto, Boxxes, the Red Cap Garage, Scandals, The Roxy. Of those, only The Roxy and Scandals remain, however tenaciously, against the advance of gentrification and the McMenaminization of everything between SW 12th and 14th along West Burnside.

This was where gay Portland came to hang out and play, a place that was thiers.

The building in the picture above is the Joyce Hotel. Its first floor, there on the corner, was home to the Fish Grotto.

The Fish Grotto is no more, having closed in 2014. The space next to it, which now holds a totes adorbs little alley-mall style boutique collection called Union Way, once held Boxxes and Red Cap Garage. Boxxes moved to the upper floor of the building on the SE corner of Burnside and SW 11th before it winked out.

The old sign for the Fish Grotto still remains, as does the board that once supported the sign for a latter-day subdivision of the Fish Grotto called the Sand Bar. Now it, as well as the Joyce Hotel itself, one of Portland's last great flophouses, stands in stasis on the corner of SW 11th and then-Stark, now-Harvey Milk Street, a ghost of Old Portland in solid, tangible form.

The corner of Harvey Milk and 12th still has remnants of the Portland what was. Note in the picture following the Peterson's Grocery on the corner. That's been a corner shop there for a very long time; up until the Peterson's near the library on Yamhill was evicted, it was Georgia's Grocery. 

The other two survivors, Scandals and The Roxy, are the market's neighbors. In the picture above, if you look for the al fresco parasols; that's Scandals.

Over Scandals, there's a true antique. I'm glad they left the sign up that declared that this was once Georgia's Laundromat.
 

And ... The Roxy. What a splendid pageant that place is. We adore it. Funky as well, pictures all over the walls, you go in there and all of a sudden you feel like you're in 1987. And the food? All bad for you, and when I say bad for you, I mean if you don't eat once here before you die, that would be bad for you.

Burgers, nachos, bad for your arteries but oh, so good for your soul.

We will always love The Roxy. How it hangs on in this area of ascending property values I don't know, but I hope it stays just this way for a very long time.

 

Old Parkrose: Adam's Market, NE 111th and Sandy

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One more thing to share today. Adjacent to the lot that contained the Carolina Motel is a lot that holds a little commercial strip building. In any other part of Portland this might hold some artisanal boutique or something. Here, it's much more Old Portland, and much more prosiac.

There's a corner quick-shop, a coin-op laundry (which has pinball, vintage video games and wood paneling straight outta the 1970s) and a little beauty parlor (just out of shot on the left).

It's forlorn in the morning light, kind of shabby but absolutely clean and trim and tidy. Not a spot of trash in the lot. And Adam's Market, open and ready for business. It's the quiet time at 111th and Sandy, though; not a customer in the place.

But this sign? I love this sign.

Adding FISHING BAIT to the mix on the sign? That elevates its game from Old Portland AF to Oregon AF.

Scenes From A Southeast Portland Diner

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Visted Tom's Restaurant and Bar at the corner of SE César E Chávez and Division. This is the third time for me and The Wife™, and this time it was the chili burger for me (which was superb). It's also a great place to simply watch the world go by, as on the CEC side of the building is a busy stop for the TriMet line 75.

The wind was brisk tonight and whipped the awning outside enough to make it feel like it was trying to come into the building. I don't blame it. It's in the 30s out there right now.

Two scenes:

The waitress diva doing her thing as we were cashing out. Tom's, according to the banner, has served Portland in this location from  1975, and it still kinda feels like 1987 in there, but totally in all the good and right ways.

They could totally make a killing with that clock on eBay, tell you what.

We definitely love this place. 13/10, would (and will) eat there again.

[pdx] Downtown Chevytown, Portland, USA

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That little portion of the inner eastside of Portland that I gave a glimpse of in the last article has a heavy accent of the way all of eastern Portland used to feel, back in the day, and the area still hasn't exhumed the last of that feeling. It emanates because the terrior is, in some subliminal way, preserved. I feel it in the concrete and the sidewalk; in the fact that Andy and Bax is still a Portland thing; the Mediterranean restaurant next to that is still going great guns, and there's still a Wentworth Chevrolet.

courtesy Michael Long on Facebook

In the two-square-block bit of inner SE Portland encompassed by SE Ankeny and Ash Streets, stretching from SE MLK Jr Blvd to SE 6th Avenue, the western one-and-a-half blocks is occupied by the dealership that once fully reveled in the title Wentworth Chevytown. Up until 2013, there was a great and beloved sign over the lot at the corner of MLK and Ash, about four stories tall, with 10-foot-tall red letters reading WENTWORTH CHEVYTOWN. Alas, the dealership, apparently beleaguered by regulation (mostly, they say, having to do with safety regulations pertaining to the high-voltage power lines on Grand Avenue directly in front of the sign) that prevented regular maintenance, deemed it should come down. The Oregonian's Eliot Njus reported the details back in 2013.

Sic transit gloria, and all that. This writing is in 2017, of course, and what changes five years, yes? But Wentworth still abides; there is a Wentworth Subaru (Subaru because Portland) on the block north of that, East Burnside between MLK and Grand, and on the corner of SE Ankeny and Grand, at 134 SE Grand Avenue, the Chevytown mark can still be seen, in appropriate vintage signage.

It is, at least stylish and retro, which doesn't get you as far as it used to get you here in the Rose City, but is still good for something.

The lot in front is another blast from the past, an OK used car lot. These used to be seen pretty much everywhere, and I don't know if OK is still an operant badge for Chevy, but what it was, as Hemmings reports with a bittersweet tone, was Chev's brand for its dealership-sold used cars. And the signs still adorn the block of Grand between Ankeny and Ash.

It gives a certain cadence to the street scene which I greatly enjoy. There was a time when brand and marketing was just kind of a background wallpaper that didn't blare out and cover everything; this reminds me of that.

#PDX_liff : Meditation On The Blanding-Out Of Old Portland

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The closing of The Third Eye Shoppe has catalyzed a lot of observations into a clear picture of evolution and how things pass along during the years. Change is constant, and change is also bittersweet; you roll with the changes but the changes, sometimes, have no intention of rolling with you, indeed they are indifferent. And there is a little world-pain that comes with that. I suppose that it's something one much just acknowledge as best as they can and be as foxy and clever and find ways to be tenable in the evolved landscape.

I remember when me and Wife were new-again to Portland after spending a few years in Corvallis. We exploited every opportunity we could get to go downtown. Downtown was funky back then. They even had an Arctic Circle with a great view of Pioneer Courthouse Square (prole burgers and fries with a perch for the best people watching in town? Damn skippy!) There was a 'Dollar Chinese Food' place, a steam-table restaurant, in the first floor of the Portland Medical Center building at SW 10th and Washington. Django Records. Art Media for art supplies. Metro on Broadway at SW Broadway and Taylor, sort of a food-court-without-a-mall-attached.

Downtown has been sanitized and de-funked. When they wanted it as a live-in neighborhood, apparently they only wanted people earning north of $75K a year down there. Me and Wife fancy a trip downtown to see if there's anything interesting down there, but I think we know in the back of our minds there's nothing really worth going to any more.

Now, it's Hawthorne. Time was there wasn't a week where we didn't find some excuse to go down Hawthorne. Jambo World Crafts, Dollar Scholar, Muse Art + Design, those were our three regular stops, there was the big raggle taggle used bookstore at SE 33rd that morphed into a vintage shop, Murder By the Book, The Daily Grind, so much that was funky and welcoming. The only thing that would attract us anymore would maybe be Powell's on Hawthorne (actually eager to see how that's building out), and Zach's Shack and Pepinos (they always had the most fabulous steak and potato burritos). But Hawthorne is going the way of downtown, losing all move, groove, and attitude, and if the social push-out of the lower middle- and lower class out to Outer East wasn't real to any one yet, why, it should be now.

Old Portland can still be found, multicolored and funky, out 122nd way, out in what the kids call 'The Numbers' … for a while, anyhow. 

[pdx] Hawthorne To Lose A Little More Funk: Goodbye to The Third Eye Shoppe

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It's gettin' tough out there, campers. This just in from Willamette Week: The Third Eye Shoppe, one of Portland's granddaddies of the funky culture that used to rule Hawthorne, is also going away:

Third Eye Shoppe, one of the city's oldest head shops, will close at the end of the month.This morning, shop owner Mark Herer, son of late cannabis legend Jack Herer, who co-founded Third Eye Shoppe in 1987, sent a text message to their glassblowers and vendors to announce that their last day in business will be March 31.

It was a head shop and sold a lot of custom, functional glass, but they had all sorts of psychedelia, posters, t-shirts, and incense. We stopped there a couple of times for the incense because The Wife™ is an incense nut.

They're going to have a big, funky, stupid party the last week of business, and if that's your sort of thing you might want to stop on by. Follow the link to the article in the pull-quote, or just visit

The blanding of Hawthorne Blvd continues, we fear.

Facebook 'em at https://www.facebook.com/ThirdEyeShoppe/.