#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_liff] Welcome To Portland. Please Drive Tenderly.

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Seen late Sunday night, eastbound on E Burnside St, just coming up to the Laurelhurst gateway at E. 32nd Avenue:

I'd never seen that one before.

Now, I know heartbreak is different for everyone. But what's just ahead is Portland's legendary Music Millenninum store (as called out by the sign), and just beyond the traffic signal, deepest, darkest Laurelhurst. I don't see how MM is anything like a heartbreak, but Laurelhurst may be one if interest rates are your monkey.

I do know that "Danger Heartbreak Dead Ahead" is the title of a hit pop music single first interpreted by the Marvelettes in October 1965, but just because it's just down the street from MM, that must be coincidence.

Still, drive tenderly, Portlanders. The love you save may be your own. And buckle up.

[ad design] Hipsters and Man Buns … Always Comedy Gold

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Saw this on a northbound TriMet bus on SE 122nd and Division yesterday:

I'm of  mixed feelings here. I'll say it, I hate the 'man-bun'. Everything's ugly about it, including the name. That 2-level (!) monstrosity is atrocious, and quite possibly a crime against some facet of humanity.

The joke is an easy one to make, though. The stereotypical hipster is someone everyone loves to hate and it's becoming something of lazy trope.

That said, though? As a reflection of the culture right now? It's funny. We laughed our asses off. 

[pdx] Portlandness Is The Atlas Portland Needed.

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There's a section, near the front of the book Portlandness: A Cultural Atlas, (David Banis and Hunter Shobe, $24.95, Sasquatch Books, www.sasquatchbooks.com) which tries to define just what 'Portlandness' is, and then goes on to illustrate just where that Portlandness is thickest. In it, the book's authors, faculty in the Geography department at Portland State University, surveyed students in one of their courses to find out what qualities define life in Portland. The list of answers were largely what one would expect – things like green energy use, breweries, liberal politics, food carts – and they then related these qualities to things that could be measured via GIS and then, plotted the density of these qualities individually and then combined them all into an infographic that illustrated the combined density of all these statistics. 

The results  come off as one might expect: the more you go toward the center of Portland, the more Portland Portland is. Or maybe the more Portlandia. And the assaying is a valuable thing, because it represents a moment in time for Portland, one which our hometown has gone from adorable regional town to the west-coast's 'It Girl'. 

Latterly, Portland has become painfully fashionable and the subject of a national love affair which, if it may be levelling off, shows little sign of abatement very soon, for better … or for worse. Is there a Portland state-of-mind? Is there a way to objectively look at  that peculiar state of being that seems to be Portland and, here in the 2010's, and lay it all out for you, comprehendably? If there is, Portlandness: A Cultural Atlas  comes as close as anything can at the moment ... a witty, earnest look at what it means to be Portland right here, right now

Portland, for all its reputation and buzz, is still on a cusp of sorts. We're still at a place in the national consciousness where we can get either even more popular or pass the crown of the new cool on to another city (sorry, in advance, new city, if we do). But we weren't always this way. There is a story, a context, to how Portland is now and what that's made up of. Portlandness tries to tell that story, as it is now. If 'Portlandness' is a thing, this atlas does its best to describe it as it finds it. In the first part, as mentioned above, it tries to quantify that. 

Portlandness is divided into seven sections, after the introduction which sets the Rose City into a Cascadian context, which group maps and infographics according to overarcing themes: Urban Landscapes, The Once and Future City, Wildness, Views of the City, Social Relations, Food and Drink, and Popular Culture. Amongst them, there's scarcely a base that hasn't been touched, from historic street names to the hauntedness level of various areas of town; one map that combines all the historic plans of how Portland could have grown into one clear-yet-detailed graphic that makes you think of what may have been; the geography of the invisibility of our city's homeless; the interface between the coyotes of Portland and its chickens; a comic on geek culture and its spatiality; another demonstrating how far one is from the nearest indie coffee shop and plots that against Starbucks; a set of set tables demonstrating how long you're going to be waiting for that food at the Screen Door cafe; Chinatown then, and now; the evolution of the Guilds Lake area; a sorely-needed 2-page spread on how the city's annexations have created its shape (my favorite); soccer culture (would you ever doubt? - there's even a set of diagrams showing the loudness levels of various sections of Providence Park during a Timbers/Sounders match), even the story of Maywood Park. One section relates how children see the city, another composites how a group of students in a PSU course made mental maps of the town, characterizing it with their impressions. There's even a map of downtown that shows you the route you must take if you wish to be surveilled by the fewest cameras. And it even tries to answer the question does Portland have more strip clubs per capita than anyone else, making smart side-stop at the reason why that would be.

The design is a tight, disciplined, visually delightful thing, which herds all these infographic cats into something with a grand sense of order. Typography is beautiful, and the infographics are well-done and diagrams you can get lost in. By starting with a strong introduction (which even compares the Portland of Oregon to the Portland of Maine and finds more similarities than you might think) to give a regional setting and context, this book goes beyond mere interesting (and well-designed) fact presentation via infographics and does what a solid reference atlas should do … behave as a snapshot of a moment in time of an important time in the story of the place that is Portland. 

This is a fine book that I really can't put down for long, and anyone who loves, is intrigued by, aggravated by, or loves from afar Oregon's biggest town really should find a space on their shelf for it. 

The Portland of 2015 is a curious thing. Portlandness: A Cultural Atlas is the atlas Portland needs for this time. I'm kind of hoping that the authors decide to do a 2nd edition sometime down the road. 

The comparison would be epic.

Portlandness: A Cultural Atlas, (David Banis and Hunter Shobe, $24.95, Sasquatch Books) is available via Sasquatch's website (http://www.sasquatchbooks.com/book/?isbn=9781632170002&portlandness-by-david-banis), which also has links to other places you can purchase the work.

[liff] A Madeleine Moment, A Block From Powell's Books

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I'm not, emphatically, one to take pictures of my food and post it on line, but for this, I make an exception.

There is a branch of Peet's Coffee on NW Couch Street Between 11th and 12th Avenues, in the place  that used to be Blitz Weinhard's brewery, and they do have the loveliest salted caramel latte. And they had madeleines!

This is what reading Proust does to one. So be it.

The biscuits of interest, with accomplice.

So, we have madeleine moments, just not as profound as Marcel's. The madeleines come three to a package and while they're locally baked, if you leave a madeleine out, it's this little cakey thing, and it'll go stale, and that'd be a shame. And while it's not as profound as Marcel's, the taste of the cream at the top coated with the salted caramel covering the end of the madeleine you've dipped thereinto gives you an idea of where a gourmet's palate might go when its owner dies.

And just down the street, Powell's City of Books … so it's not only delicious, it's painfully Portland on more than one level.

[art] What Do You Do At East Burn at 11 PM on a Sunday Evening?

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Well, since the tables are covered with a sort of Kraft paper, and crayons are provided, you draw something.

And this is … well, certainly something. 

The crayons were kinda sad and unhelpful, so I used the trusty Cross Classic Century.

Another thing you do is order and share the Trinity fries, which are regular French fries, sweet-potato fries, and deep fried leek shreds. This is really tasty and relatively economical … you get a big bowl of fries for $8, and if you split that, that's $4 per. And $4 really isn't so much to spot when they taste that good. Also came with rosemary aioli. I'm not that big a fan of aioli.

And since it was sitting between us, we were suspiciously close to playing with (or in) our food.

And, it was all fun and games …

… until Rocketship X-1 showed up.

We didn't stay around to welcome the astronauts. We'd already had a full day.

[pdx] Portlandia, Where You Bound?

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Some time ago, I forget where, I opined that so many people think Portland wants to grow up to be Seattle, but they're wrong … Portland actually wishes it were San Francisco.

Following the news about the techsters taking over there, and the boho, artistic SF culture that the city was famous for being driven out in some sort of human expression of Gresham's law, and following the current news about rents whizzing upward towards some sort of physical escape velocity that is currently driving lower-income workers and renters toward the margins (and perhaps even beyond in the near future), it's hard not to, at least, disagree with my own past thoughts. Portland is becoming SF-like, in all the wrong ways.

On SE 8th, just off Hawthorne, is a basketball backboard, It's in the shape of the state of Oregon, but says Welcome to California. It's gotten some legs. Inspired by that, I offer this little bit of agitprop.

[pdx_art] Gwenn Seemel: The Legacy of Charlie Hales

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Gwenn Seemel, who did the amazing Kirk Reeves mural on NE Grand Avenue at Lloyd Blvd in the Lloyd District, has her doubts about the legacy of Mayor Charlie Hales.

I find I have the same thoughts, feelings, and impressions. While people like me stew and worry and argue within ourselves and amongst ourselves, she arts it out.

Watch:


The legacy of Mayor Charlie Hales from Gwenn Seemel on Vimeo.

Get a closeup of that picture, go to her blog: http://www.gwennseemel.com/index.php/blog/comments/legacy_charlie_hales/

[PDX] Faux Telephoto - Hawthorne And The Big Hill East of César E Chávez

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It was said, on the Hawthorne Street Fair Facebook page, that this was the first time the Boulevard between 30th and 38th had been closed in decades.

This gave the perfect opportunity, of course, for some angles that you couldn't otherwise get else the chance of grievous bodily injury. An always-inspiring view is the view east down Hawthorne, with the street rising to meet, and appear to be utterly defeated by, our legendary volcano-within-a-city, Mount Tabor.

It will be remembered, though, that Hawthorne Blvd was named after Dr. Hawthorne, who once ran what they called then an "Home for the Insane" down near where the Hawthorne Bridge now, and the street started life as Asylum Avenue.

So, on Hawthorne, unless anything's possible and everything's a little crayzee, then it ain't right. Not really.

The above photo looks down Asylum Avenue east from just west of Chávez up tow where the street jogs south on the side of Mount Tabor. That edifice at the apparent termination of the street is the Portland campus of Western Seminary.

Notice the dude there in the lower left of frame. He's doing what I'm doing, except his only companion is a tripod. Tripods are nice, but wives are better to have around. Just my opinion, of course. Now, when  you widen the angle, here's what you see …

The loftily-named 'Mount' Tabor is merely a hill, though a most pulchritudinous one. It is an extinct volcano, and one of the western outposts of what is amusingly called the Boring Volcanic Field. A great number of small, knobbly hills spread out south and east into the Multnomah and Clackamas hinterlands; these all erupted over one period, with nary a peep since the last 300,000 years.

In short, it's dead, Jim.

The summit elevation is reported as 636 feet above sea level; the surrounds are about 200 feet above sea level, though, so that's a 400 foot hill there. Still, remarkable; of all the cities in the USA, only four are thought to have extinct volcanoes within the city boundary. Two of them are in Oregon.

When you zoom in, crop and frame, and go for a compressed perspective view, though, that's where I fall in love:

The parts of Hawthorne west of Tabor are kind of in two parts to me: the painfully cute and fashionable, which stretch from about SE 30th Avenue to Chåvez Blvd, and the more clubby section, which run from Chávez to 50th.

When reviewing the photos I was going to put there, I realized that I tend to prefer photos with few people in them. This one, with the two young dudes there, just ambling down the street enjoying life, spoke to me, saying that maybe I shouldn't be so aloof. But, just to satisfy the aesthete in me:

… here's one where you can ignore the peoples, if you want.

A few years back, when we Portlanders went through the spasmic renaming of what we then called NE and SE 39th Avenue to César E Chávez Boulevard, it was such a strange thing. Yet again, the careful rules that were agreed on to ensure that everyone … especially those along the route, who would have to spend money changing up stationery and signage … was on board with the change, were rather casually set aside because reasons. And more than a few people, of more than one ethnic POV, pointed out that it'd take more than a street name change to really address the problems that we all saw in a mere street name-change.

But the change did go through, as it did. And I don't think I'm off the beam in saying that it very much appears that the vast majority of us have not only made peace with the change, but have embraced it. I like the idea that my hometown has a street named for Chávez; it fits with the sort of place Portland's trying to collectively constantly reinvent itself as.

So when I take a picture like this:

… with the street blade settling in against the charming latticework of the windows in the façade of the Hawthorne Theater, there's something there that's never been more natural somehow. It's part of the fabric of Portland now, which has been many things, sometimes simultaneously, often contradictingly … corrupt and holy, fair and unjust, progressive and regressive, rich of heart and poor of spirit …  All of that. Depending on time you look and the angle of persistence.

Exegesis in a photo.

One more: as addicted as I'm becoming to the forced perspective, the Telepfauxto, in sizing and cropping for display, this angle and crop hit me as perfect. Just makes me happy. That's all it is here:

I love you, Portland.

[pdx] One Does Not Merely Walk Into Hawthorne, It Is Said

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From the Dept of It Could Happen Anywhere But You'll Automatically Assume It's Happening In Portland And You Won't Be Wrong Dept we have this gem (via KATU):

The last thing the woman from Northeast Portland probably expected when she got up Tuesday morning was that she would be attacked by a sword-wielding elf.But that's what happened around 7 a.m. as she drove her red BMW by the intersection of Southeast 7th and Morrison.A man dressed in chain-mail with a helmet, shield and carrying a sword and staff ran into traffic and started attacking her car.

She thought at first he was a pirate, but it turned out he thought he was a high-elf battling a Middle Earthian baddie. Follow the link to find out which.

The funniest, zeitgeistiest thing to me about it is the headline which said the man self-identified as a High-Elf. You see, that's the way we roll here in Portlandia; we don't 'call ourselves' anything, we don't 'think we are' anything (except for Lars Larson, who's a legend in his own mind, mostly), we self-identify.

We may not physically be the thing, but we never question each others' right to completely feel the thing that we know we are, pharmaceutical influence withstanding or not.

Heck, when I was a kid in Silverton they told me I could be anything I want.

So I became a Portlander.

We're a damn' silly place sometimes, but that's not actually a sin. Well, not until you start beating up on someone's BMW in your High-Elf kit, which we do not recommend.

And so it goes, PDX.

[pdx] On A Clear Day You Can See Mount Hood, or, Portland From the Pittock Mansion Before The Snow

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Tomorrow at this time we expect to be engulfed by snow drifts measuring as much as three or four inches. Some say it's global warming, others say that it's the opening salvo softening us up for the kaiju invasion from the Fukushima event. Either way, this is what Portland looked like before the white hammer fell:

This is a wonderful angle and thanks to the free week at the Pittock Mansion, a photo I finally got round to taking.

Got more of this coming in entries to come; the Pittock is one place that has brought Portland history alive like no other for me. Learning something truly new is a good thing, and the wonderful Pittock makes it all vibrant and real.

See you all on the other side of the snowstorm.

[art] Saturday in Portlandia: Handwriting Class with Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay

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If it's Saturday and I'm in a handwriting class and there are adults there, this must be Portland.

That's what I couldn't help thinking while waiting for the workshop to start, and various variation thereunto.

This last Saturday, the handwriting artists and calligraphers Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty held a three-hour seminar on their Getty-Dubay Handwriting Method in a room called Kempton Hall at the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in NW Portlandia. This was a feast for my eyes and senses on so many levels.

The room itself was large yet cozy, with the sort of clear-lacquered floor one expects to see in auditoriums and dance rooms. Inlaid into this is a large labyrinth, the kind that's popular these days to walk along as a meditative tool, and a stage at the front of the room which has seen decades of use, worn in that well-maintained, much-loved way such things can be.

All was in brown, comforting, earth tones. Above the room, on the south wall, a monumental painting of the cleric this room was named for commanded and watched over all; it's a very very kind space. And we were all there to see how we might right gud.

Er, write good. Sorry. Couldn't suppress the joke.

The seminar was free and offered me a chance to kick my obsessed-upon handwriting up to the next level, and The Wife™, who is writing more stuff these days and I couldn't be more pleased with this, wanted some tips to make her handwriting sing a little more.

Ain't no sin there, wanting to handwrite better, and I'll stand in nobody's way.

My handwriting has always been good, and the way I obsess on it, it should be. But a refresher betimes is no sin, and when you can get Getty and Dubay's insights for just showing up … well, as Tom once said, free is a very good price!

You may have heard that the preference for handwriting in America is declining, with even cursive in danger of becoming a lost art (I wouldn't be so sad as to lose cursive, but more on that later). So, even though the seminar  was on a Saturday tucked into a corner of NW Portland which is kind of hard to find parking in even on a slow day, the attendance was … well, extremely heartening. We got there about 35 minutes before the show got underway, which was lucky for us as we were kind of pushing it. Though I lived in NW back when it was still affordable, there's one thing that hasn't changed at all: Parking is hell there. We lucked and got one of the few spots in the Trinity Cathedral's microchip-sized parking lot.

I'd heard of Getty-Dubay handwriting before but this was going to be an up-close look, and I was eager, to say the least. I've been an advocate of italic handwriting (as opposed to cursive, which is what we all learned in school – I was a victim of the Palmer method) for all my adult life so far. When I was

The first of my many role-models.
Sourced from here.

in high school I had an epiphany after looking at typing from an IBM Selectric Light Italic typeball (how the olde-tymers kicked word-processing old-school, yo). I can't remember the day or time of the epiphany, but I do remember gaining, quite suddenly, the awareness of two things:

1. I didn't have to write cursive the way they said I had to anymore, and
2. If I made it legible, they wouldn't care anyway.

I had started in junior high, actually, writing my minuscule q a certain way that gave it a foresail-shaped banner instead of a loop, not knowing then I had discovered one of my own keys to distinctive, recognizable, and admired handwriting (I am not bragging when I say I've received more compliments than I can count on my everyday hand … it's the truth). 

What I was busy discovering, in my reinventing-the-wheel way, was italic handwriting. To most of us, italic means what I just did with that word italic there … giving it a slant for emphasis. The word italic comes to us from Italy, where the slanted hand was first devised. And it was  used there for fine, fine handwriting … every handwriting aficionado knows of Arrighi's La Operina, and it would do one no damage to peruse a copy when the chance presents itself. This is italic at its utmost, and most poetic.

Today's handwriting is a mess. This I lay at the door of what we commonly call 'cursive'. It has a noble purpose - speed. The word cursive itself shares Latin roots with a word which also gave us coursing and Corsair … words denoting fleet speed. Some call it running script. To promote quickness in writing, letters are joined and loops introduced, and if you can do it right, it stays readable. 

It's tough, though, to do cursive right. Cursive promotes speed and speed becomes its own excuse, leading to a mess of loops and capital letters than in no way resemble either the minuscule versions or the constructed, printed version. Sure, there's a G, Q and S somewhere in the strange cursive construction meant to stand in for them. But you've pretty much got to take their word for it. Cursive destroys legible handwriting, without legibility, nobody wants to do it much. Who's going to blame them?

Italic handwriting promotes deliberation, and if you started out slowly at it at first, don't worry: you needed training wheels before you can ride on two wheels, and starting out in italic can be maddeningly slow. 

But then, you weren't born writing cursive, either.

The Getty-Dubay method teaches italic handwriting with an emphasis on simple rules you learn on the 'printing' side of the learning curve which just about anyone who can hold a pencil can aspire to. Then, when you're ready to go to the 'big leagues' of cursive italic, you learn a handful of simple joins, then you learn you can use them or not, as you care to. There's a wonderfully simple structure that you can decorate up or leave spare as you please. Italic really is more simple to learn than you might think. I'd challenge people to find this out for themselves.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by a very nice and polite young lady who gave us white envelopes with the seminar's materials. There were handouts with practice-sheets (which we all used, rather lustily) five or six sheets of good-old-fashioned looseleaf, and the most delightful example-card which now has pride of a certain place in my studio. It's pleasant just to look at, and inspirational to look at besides. It'll stay up there for a long time to come, I expect.

The teachers, Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay, give off the air of being elementary school teachers from way back and, as far as I was able to find, they were; you wouldn't think that they could deliver the basics in three hours but, by Arrighi's nibs, they sure were. The passion they had for this certainly delivered. And the classmates were as affable and friendly a group of learners as I ever wanted to find. There was free World Cup coffee, which can make a bad day good and a good day better, and they sold some of their books at a table in the back for a discount just for your having come out.

I've read books by Lloyd Reynolds and Fred Eager, and Getty/Dubay belongs alongside of them; ahead, because they are the current champions of handwriting as a thing in these modern times, a task which must seem thankless now and again. But I'd recommend this to everyone. Look, you don't have to write for anyone but yourself even to enjoy the fun in handwriting this way.

From what I've seen, Getty and Dubay run a seminar like this every January. They are more popular than you'd think, and if there's going to be another one in January 2015, then I'd just start making my plans now.

You can keep up with Inga and Betty on their website, http://www.handwritingsuccess.com/.  I've seen their books on handwriting at Powell's, as well.

[pdx] … And A Transit Bridge Runs Through It: An Editorial Comment

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TriMet has, this week, released the list of the finalists for the name they'll be sticking on the new landmark Portland-Milwaukie Transit Bridge. They are:

1. Wy'East
2. Duniway
3. Cascadia Crossing
4. Tillicum Crossing

The four names stand pretty large in the history of the  Salish lands and the history of the American Pacific Northwest. Wy'East is, of course, the name the original locals gave Mount Hood. Duniway is for Abigail Scott Duniway, the suffragette (who already stands tall with a legacy of a park and a school), tillicum is Chinuk wawa for us folks, our people, our tribe, and Cascadia is the emerging name for our regional identity latterly.

A few problems come to mind with these names. All of them are fairly unoffensive, The first two still manage some inspiration, the last two sound like suburban shopping malls. Very historical, very important, very expected.

The real sad part, personally, for me, is who didn't even make the short list:

Kirk Reeves. To most Portlanders, he should need no introduction, but to those who arrived late in the game, here's a Working Kirk primer for you. Kirk Reeves, the white-suited man at the west end of the Hawthorne Bridge (and betimes other places, busking for a living, making bad comedy shows on local access, appearing as himself every OryCon, and basically making the world better by just being. Kirk Reeves, whose struggle with keeping the wolves at bay grew to be so wearing that he gave in, just a few months over a year ago.

TriMet has published the list of suggestions. I haven't the inclination to count myself, but a subjective peruse of the 202-page list of suggestions seems to indicate a sheer preponderance of Kirk (in some variant spellings). Joseph Rose at Soylent News™remarks that a page count comes up with Kirk's name on about 11 pages of the document; by contrast, Duniway got about four, and Wy'East, two.

So, clearly, this wasn't a popularity contest. 

It does make TriMet seem a little out-of-touch with its constituency though. Wouldn't be the first time that has happened over the last few years, we bittersweetly note, not at all.

It has been pointed out to me that perhaps a sort of wide-screen personality could really only support the idea of a bridge name. As far as that goes, Wy'East or Duniway goes just fine with me. And, as T.A. Barnhart pointed out to me, Kirk's name would fit perhaps a little better as a park name or a place where performers could come out to play. I'd picture that as a Oregonized sort of Speaker's Corner, something we really could rock, in a Portland way. Picture people debating in one part, someone playing a public tune in another, and not one of our local over-promoted, over priced you-have-to-pay-to-get-into-Tom McCall-Waterfront-Park dos, either. 

A people's space? Working Kirk Reeves People's Park? I could get behind that.

But, in the meantime, if TriMet wasn't interested in what the people really wanted, why did it bother to ask at all? If there was no possibility of Kirk's name going on the bridge, at least it could have thrown us a bone by putting it on the short list.

And, in my opinion? I think Kirk was big-screen enough for his name to go on that bridge.

I wonder, would his story have turned out any differently if he'd have known how much affection the community had for him?

I know people might disagree with that, and I'm down with it.

You can download the pdf list here, if you wanna.