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.
Portland's newest "neighborhood" from a vantage point across the Willamette River.
In the 2000's, someone looked at a lot of low-lying, old industrial land along the river and thought You know what would be nifty here? A sterile residential district with cold, monolithic towers featuring architecture that wouldn't be out of place anywhere. That's Portland!
And they got their wish. So inspiring!
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.
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.
