By Samuel John Klein of Portland, Oregon - Graphic Designer without Portfolio, aspiring artist who dawdled too long.
More color at Riverplace. A bit of Western colonization myth.
Just after you leave Harbor Drive on S Montgomery St there, immediately, is a short frontage street called (unsurprisingly) S Harbor Pl. Turn right on that and go to the cul-de-sac at the end, and look left.
A cartoon mural. Yippie-ki-yi-yay, if you follow.
It looks all Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, with a dash of ELO's "Wild West Hero" thrown in, and laid out in a comic book.
Equally topical is the tent, but for different reasons.
When we were at Riverplace a couple of weeks back, I saw that someone had a great deal of fun with colored chalk on the pavers.
I found it delightful.
We'd wondered where the colors came from, then we noticed the almost-kiosk-sized coffee bar immediately to the right of this, it's on maps as Pájaro, and it was hard to tell if it was closed due to reduced hours or pandemic-defunct, but the colored chalk was in there.
A couple of weeks back I mentioned the flower gardens just off the end of Montgomery Street in RiverPlace and here's a picture I took which charmed me.
One feature of the landscaping is an arrangement of small square pools, and these pools have lilypads.
Water lilies are one of those things which signify the Greater World to me. I didn't see anything like that during my growing time in Silverton, but I get out here, and they're everywhere I want to find them.
I do adore water lilies. Especially when someone else gets to care for them.
There is a lovely park just off the circle where Montgomery becomes River Drive in the Riverplace nabe; it has lilyponds and colorful flowers and all sorts of botanical niceness.
It makes for great photographs of irises with this great freeway bridge in the background, I'll tell you that much.
I've got a couple of others to share in episodes to follw.
Of the infuriating ways the City o'Portland erects street blades, sometimes, at least this one is amusing. Allow me to introduce you to the street blade set in Riverplace at the traffic circle that serves as the intersection between Montomery Street and River Drive:
It's not that the city hasn't yet even updated this sign to confirm to the new South district (and besides, I kvetched about that in the last episode). No, it involves the misplacement and inversion of two letters on that sign. Note the W in the SW: the outer strokes are absolutely vertical. Now, notice the second M in MONTGOMERY. The outer strokes on that have angles.
The W in the SW is actually an upside-down M.
The 2nd M in MONTGOMERY is actually an upside-down W.
And it repeats exactly on the other side of the sign, too. Take my word for it. So, at least the city is consistent about it, which makes me admire them in a perverse way.
