[pdx] The Original Design For The City Of Portland's Seal, Revealed

3386.

It's long been known that, in the secret history of the Rose City, that Portland is a town that was built on an ancient unicorn burial ground. What's less known is that the original city seal's design featured one.

Portlandia, of course, is a virgin in this depiction. Unicorns will only associate with virgins, goes the legend.

Naturally, more sober heads prevailed and we have the current boring version which features Portlandia, a sheaf of wheat, a hammer, a gear, a ship to shop the poor people out so more prosperous people can move in, and three food carts, only one of which is ever open (never when you stop by).

And so it goes. 

[pdx_liff] Passing The Cool Torch To Pittsburgh … Or Are We?

2742.My friends, my fellow adopted- and lifelong-Oregonians and Portlanders, I have great news: 'The List', that ever-so-adept (and never-incorrect) arbiter of what's now cool and what was cool, has deemed Portlandia no longer teh hottness … and has wrenched away our cool badge and given it … horrors … to … Pittsburgh? 


Good god. Next thing you know, Salem will get its own Trader Joes.

Oh, you mean it has?

Oh, my.

The piece celebrating this epochal event, written by a Washington Post writer expatriate of Pittsburgh, Maura Judkis, is a thoughtful, considered piece, going into depth about the shallowness and superficiality of determining social trends and community qualities through surface styles and trendy notices in the press. Further, it delineates that despite trends, the qualities of community that made Portland so fashionable didn't spring up overnight but grew and developed in time over years; indeed, Portland's uniqueness is a quintessential quality that was here before we got fashionable, and will linger here long after fashion changes.

Well, sorry, I tell a lie there. That's just me being Portland-style ironic, or sarcastic, or something. Actually, the Judkis piece spends so much time doing the we're-cooler-than-Portland happy dance it fails at its modest goal of even scratching the surface. The deep, thoughtful article that should have been written was written but … wait for it … a Portlander, Brian Libby:

Instead of reading the tea leaves of decades-long socio-economic urban trends that have emboldened Portland and Pittsburgh, or any number of smaller cities around the world, this article and others before it - particularly those covering the Portlandia TV show - have instead confused them with trite, fickle pop cultural cache. The notion of 15 minutes of fame was of course coined by Pittsburgh-born Andy Warhol, but the mentality shown here is less that of a visionary art provocateur than of a TMZ or E! reporter genuflecting or scoffing at a Kardashian depending on the time of day.

The whole thing should be a required read for anyone who thinks Judkis made a point here. Including Judkis.

In the meantime, fashion and fame being the chimera so stipulated, it's notable, as Judkis herself points out, that Portland is the home of Portlandia, and I would add, two other series, one which even relocated its setting to Portland after pretending it was set in Boston for the past several seasons. whereas Pittsburgh, not to be too nebby here, is still, even now, only subbing for other locales.

If 15 minutes of fame is, as Pittsburgh-originated Andy Warhol dubbed it, nothing more than a duration of freshness rather than a tart commentary on the insipidness of the fame-culture then, sorry to say, Yinzers, Portlandia's clock still has a few minutes left to run. Don't get too impatient. You'll get your turn. Maybe.

Predicting what's next is a bit like betting where lightning will strike.

And no matter what happens, we'll still have our unicorns. You can't take that away from us.

[net_liff] "Spot the Unicorn", Zach Dundas Twitter Edition

2698.If you love something, they say, set it free.

Whoever came up with that folksy aneurysm must have had the internet in mind. Latterly, this bit of Unicorn-oriented Photoshoppery:

Which I created in March, 2010, has been showing up in interesting places. The newest find? The Twitter icon for Portland Monthly editor, Zach Dundas:

Am I irritated? Hardly! Flattered! Look, I know this about that; when you create something like this and fling it down the 'tubes, it'll get lifted and passed about. That was kind of the idea here. Right now, it's as close as I'm getting to fame, so, hey, it's cool. Definitely cool.

Remember the unicorns, my friends. You don't know you flattered me, Zach, but if you read this article, now you do. Thanks. Long may Saint Unicorn fly. Even though he hath no wings, yes, I know this.

[pdx] Happy First Year, Dave And Heather

2675.Many cool couples have wedding anniversaries in August. My wife and I are one.

Dave (DaveKnowsPortland) and Heather (Mile73) are another. This member of an insufferably-happily-married couple wishes that pair have many more. 

[unicorns] PDX Unicorn Mounted Patrol - Magically Delicious

2600.A very very thrilled tip-o-the-unicorn-horn today to Farmer McGlitter, who's featuring a photo and a link to this blog entry in his blog Unicornomics today:

Word is getting out that Portland was built on a unicorn burial ground, and that makes us even more magical!

Farmer McG's post, including five things that make having a mounted unicorn patrol awesome, can be found here:

http://unicornomics.com/unicorn-mounted-police

Clean. Green. Sustainable. Magical. Unicorns!

 

[pdx] Keep Calm, PDX

2589.My version of a popular meme, brought on by an extended browse at the Paper Zone earlier today:

It's words to live by, peoples.

[pdx] St. Unicorn's Day … A Day To Remember

2584.Whatever you think of Portland's special atmosphere, that which makes us special didn't just happen. Oh, it's an environment that promotes itself, true, and that's a first cause, but, as Dr. Hans Reinhardt cogently said before he dove the USS Cygnus into the black hole in that Disney movie, "what caused … that cause?"

Research is ongoing here at the Portland Unicorn Institute for Portland Unicorn Studies, but every avenue of research conducted has led ineluctably to the conclusion that PDX is indeed built on an ancient unicorn burial ground. Our crazy, friviolous, delightful, NYT-celebrated culture most likely descends from this very fact.

Research has slowed a bit because grants are hard to come by latterly, but we do what we can on what we have, and the direction the research is going is promising Additionally cheering is that many independent lines of research have developed, the most notable being independent scholars such as Dave Strom and Mike Vogel. Each approaches the discipline with their own style and jenny say qua, as the French say. We don't know what that is.

But still, knowing that differing reasearch lines converge toward the same thing must feel like when Liebniz and Newton independently developed the Calculus - after the hairpulling catfight over came up with it first, of course. Intellectual joy!

We work tirelessly toward a view on our shared Unicornate past, as well as the view or Portland history that that will define. Until then, on St. Unicorn's day - have a drink in their honor. But don't drink to forget - drink to remember.

Because that's the way we roll here in PDX, yo.

 

[pdx] What I Saw At The #PDXBoom

2371.

If I didn't love Twitter before, I do now. As it is, I enjoy the pal-making, chaotic, cocktail-party chattering that happens. And, occasionally, it makes sort-of history.

For the first time that I can remember, sitting in front of your computer all day actually made a little more sense than going out and doing something. Fortunately, Mondays being days off for me, I had the time. And the ongoing Twitter-driven saga of the #PDXBoom was a compelling show I couldn't ignore,and better than anything on the TV.

The activity on the Twitter hash-tag has damped down quite a bit after yesterday but it's still going on, mostly people tweeting and retweeting the observations they had about the power of social media and sharing articles they were reading. The take-away from all this seems to be that the chaotic buzz of social media and geekery surrounding #PDXBoom made a sort of history. It also made for great fun.

1. Portland Makes History Via Social Media.

As the story goes, Reid Beels, local member of the Open Source community, got the inspiration to make a Google community map after seeing tweets that were coalescing under the #PDXBoom hashtag. Even I put a marker down (Didn't hear any noise; we suspect the unicorns), and by the beginning of the day Monday it was fairly thick with reports about who was where, what they heard, and what they thought it was.

The map became known as PDXBOOM as well and, minor technical problems not withstanding (the edit button on the Google community map seemed to be a little fugitive) provided a great view, on its own, of the spread of the phenomenon.

The vigor at which the map was pinned alone seemed to be a phenomenon of its own. The boom just seemed strange, and I sensed there were a lot of people who were compelled by not only the need to understand but also perhaps a similar event that happened about a week or so prior that also had no explanation. But people loved it, and people loved marking it up.

Today, Reid Beels was featured in an article published in the New York Times, and the combination of the map and Twitter #PDXBoom activity seemed to appear as more of a making-real of the sort of activity that social media was supposed to enable, in the good way, collaboration by hundreds or thousands toward solving a problem or a mystery, which dovetails into the second thing:

2. We Are Detective, We Are Select.

As it happened, the Portland Police Bureau is aware of how powerful a tool this is, and their savvy use of the Twitter buzz and the Google map was admirable. Embedded within the PDXBOOM map were, as I intimated, descriptions of the event with most of the markers. The quality of the reported report allowed a sort of inductively-logical triangulation.

with the map on Google is a link to download a .kml file which will bring the info into Google Earth. This I did, and I too found out how useful it was to track the spot. The most remarkable reports were given by those near the Willamette River in Sellwood, such as these screen clips will show:

Another nearby sighting claimed it was like "somebody parked their car in my living room". Most of the reports from Sellwood were that way. Clues were left all over the place.

3. The Front Page, The Twitter Version

For me, the most entertaining facet of the whole thing was watching the local TV Newsers communicate and tweet about what they were going to find and what they were going to do next.

For my money, the two most Twitter-able electronic media organizations in town are KGW-Channel 8 and KATU-Channel 2. They seem to get Twitter more than the other outlets do. And they updated the punters with what they had when they had it.

The following was from my asynchronous point of view and what I remember; your mileage may indeed vary.

But it seemed to become a competition between them, right out the old days of newspapers. As it developed that, what eventually everyone would find out - it was a big-ass pipebomb buried in the Willamette River's left bank south of the Sellwood Bridge in an undeveloped strip of land between Southwest Riverside Drive and the River called Powers Marine Park - was figured out by KGW and KATU, and they were off to the races with it. First tweets, from the KATU crew, came in the 11:30 AM to Noon-or-so time frame, intimating that they knew what was what and if you tuned in to KATU for the 4 PM and 5 PM TV reports, you'd know all about it too.

All of a sudden, though, KGW piped up with tweets about how they were sending Pat Dooris out right then to check the site out, and in pretty short order, KATU tweeted what they had found out from Portland Police. And, at 4 PM, there was Megan Kalkstein on KATU, on the scene - and able to say that they were the first ones out there.

As a fan of newsers, it was a great thing to watch ... two passionate news organizations going it in an old-school journalistic style, with the immediacy of Twitter added in. I think of it as evolution in action.

4. It Was A Big Party ...

& and all you had to have to show up was something that drove a browser and accessed Twitter.

There was a lot of antic fun going on. We found out that Heather of Mile73 and Dave of Dave Knows PDX were getting engaged, and there was much rejoicing. I got new pals, notably, KPTV's reporter Mark Ross who, with help from one other person, got up to 100 followers.

It was a BYOB party, to be sure, as most distributed dos are. But there was an air of festivity and fun. A lot of people chiming in, a lot of witticisms cracked, a lot of music recommendations shared, a lot of new connections forged.

I made some new friends of my own, not the least KPTV's Mark Ross, of whom me and one other person helped him get over 100 followers. He's someone who's got a cat, he claims, who thinks he's a dog, which is okay by me. Anyone can have a cat who thinks he's a cat.

Many of us seemed to be skeptical that the boom could have been heard so far off - after all, how could a pipe bomb be heard all the way from Sellwood to I-205 (in some cases - not mine, but some)? The Big O's movie maven, Shawn Levy, reminded me that the heavy clouds and the damp air could have made it travel quite far.

And that's another thing I love about Twitter. It's the great equalizer. It doesn't matter that I'm not, say, aplusk? No. I've made connections that I never thought I'd ever make, and they're just people - most of them are pretty nice. Besides, what would I do with over four million followers?

(Mind you, I'm not entirely against finding I have four million followers some day. Just sayin')

I was thrilled to be there myself. And even though my only real contribution to the map was a marker near 117th and SE Market saying "I heard nothing", the thought of that being even the smallest part of this thing that made a little bit of modern social media history was pretty cool.

Technorati Tags: PDXBoom

[pdx] Made In Oregon Sign Belongs To City Now: May We Re-suggest Unicorns?

2359.

As announced on City Commissioner Randy Leonard's site today, Ramsay Signs have donated the famous (and almost U-of-O-oriented) "Made In Oregon" sign, and it will be restyled, with proceeds for conversion and upkeep generated by the pay-to-park lot underneath the Burnside Bridge. Here's an idea of what it will look like, from Commissioner Leonard's page:

Very nice. I like the design; I still think Made In Oregon had a certain resonance to it, and especially since I was also made in Oregon (round about the Silverton area over a period of about 9 months, though I don't particularly recall it). But I think we could have made it really Portland, and have a modest proposal: instead of that, why not:

Portland: built on an ancient unicorn burial ground.

Remember the unicorns.

Technorati Tags: Unicorns, Made In Oregon Sign, Portland, PDX, PDX Quirks, PDX Unicorns, PDX Unicorn Burial Ground

[pdx] It's St. Unicorn's Day … When We Drink To Remember

2352.

Everywhere else, it's St. Patrick's Day. You drink to forget.

But in Portland, it's St. Unicorn's Day … where you drink to remember.

Remember the Unicorns.

Dave Knows.

And Mike Vogel does, too.

So, today, drink to remember. 'Tis St. Unicorn's day.

And so it goes.

Technorati Tags: PDX, St Unicorn's Day, PDX Unicorn Burial Ground

[pdx] Become A Fan of "Portland Was Built On An Ancient Unicorn Burial Ground" On Facebook …

2331. … and not just because the graphic I made in this chapter is the front page graphic for it.

Although, IMHO, it's a very good reason to.

Technorati Tags: PDX, PDX LIff, Portland Was Built On An Ancient Unicorn Burial Ground, PDX Unicorns

[pdx] More Proof That PDX Is Unicorn City, USA

2234.Via Twitterer BlazersEdge, we find even more evidence of Portland's privileged position as being built atop an ancient Unicorn burial ground: we attract bball players who are actual Unicorns. Here is a picture of forward Jawan Howard, recouperating from a successful horn removal:

Now, as righteous as it is that Portland is on the site of the Unicorn burial ground, it'd be positively awesome to say that you actually were a Unicorn.

But we can see how that'd get in the way on the court. It's best this way.

They grow back, anyway.

At least, I think they do.

That's what I hear.

Good luck on the season, Jawan.

Technorati Tags: PDX, Portland, Portland Trail Blazers, Juwan Howard, PDX Unicorns, PDX Unicorn Burial Ground

Portland: You Can Ride Your Unicycle Here

2084.NB: Nifty thanks to Sarah Mirk of The Merc for teh linkage! Nifty!

Just one more reason Portland is 100% full of win: the unicycle lane:

According to this flickr user here, it's on NW Cornell Road, outbound, in the inner NW Portland nabe. Photo is by Shannon Henry and is Creative Commons Attrib/NC/Share-Alike 2.0 licensed. Good on Shannon.

All we need FTW? Unicorn lanes.

Technorati Tags: Portland, Unicycles, Unicorns, NW Cornell Rd, Portland Photos

Come Watch Me Botch Up Twitter, Too.

2064.This is something I so don't plan on taking seriously:

http://twitter.com/SJKPDX

Because it's not like I do anything important or interesting, so I just act out. Pretty much same-ol'-same-ol'.

Technorati Tags: Samuel John Klein, SJKPDX, Twitter

We Can Try To Understand The New York Times' Effect On Man

2043.The New York Times can make or break a region with its world class commentary, cosmopolitan air, and gimlet-sharp prose.

We already know what's happened with Portland. From the vantage of Manhattan, PDX is The City On The Hill, Built On The Ancient Unicorn Burial Ground. We don't just set style, we are style.

But if your state Tourism board comes up with a lame branding strategy, well ...

And Wisconsin has “Live Like You Mean It,” which sounds less like an invitation to vacation than a self-improvement project. As a matter of fact, besides being an old Bacardi slogan, it is also the title of a motivational book whose authors promise to guide you toward “a meaningful, fulfilling, and happier life with results worthy of legacy building.”

I don’t know about you, but when I want to get away from it all, I do not want to take my legacy along with me.

Kelli Trumble, the secretary for the Wisconsin Department of Tourism, said she was heartened that the new slogan already has an “amazing” 90 percent awareness rate in the state, although it’s pretty easy to get attention when you have a radio news anchor in Milwaukee blogging “Wisconsin: We have a lame slogan ... AND WE STOLE IT!”

Ooof. Now, that's cold.

On a separate but related note, I now understand why I was run out of Wisconsin that one time. I wasn't living like I meant it, I was living like I was screwing around!

Maybe we can ship them a few unicorns. That always works for me.

Technorati Tags: Wisconsit, Live Like You Mean It, New York Times, Gail Collins

The Made In Oregon Sign: Settled, But Sadly, No Unicorns

2022.Those who were expecting a steel-cage death match between Randy Leonard and Dave Frohnmayer (or maybe one of his seconds) were to be disappointed in Council, according to PMerc's Matt Davis, who reports a very convivial resolution, resulting in this pleasing (albeit Unicorn-free) design:

Image cropped from the version on PMerc's site.
Used for illustration purposes only pursuant to fair use;
content creator reserves all rights.

Altho I don't quite get how the U of O buying the sign means Commish Randy can say "this is the final version of the sign", but I don't pretend to understand how (or why) city government works.

That's Matt's job. Maybe he'll explain in the next Hall Monitor column.

Also, I want a big screen TV like the have in Council chambers. That thing's sa-weet!

Technorati Tags: Portland, Made In Oregon Sign, Randy Leonard, Portland City Council, Portland Skyline, Portland Landscape

Leaked: The Made In Oregon Sign's Actual Final Design

1998.Nota Bene: I see by my incoming stats (as well as my higher-than-normal-visitor-count for the day) that this post has been tipped not only on Oregon Reddit by Dave of Dave Knows Portland but also by Matt Davis at PMerc! Nifty! if you stopped by from either of those points of departure then thank you muchly for stopping by! Please consider browsing the rest of my fine establishment, and say hi! Any linkage gladly returned! And the unicorns will smile upon you too!

by After secret and very tense negotiations between all the stakeholders in the "Made In Oregon" sign imbroligo over the weekend, which took place at the Coffee Romance at SE 82nd and Powell by the Food "4" Less store, we have an exclusive look at the design which has been leaked to us by a highly-placed but unnamed horse. Here it is:

This goes beyond the mere replacement of the words to remodel the bounding stag into a true reflection of the soul and sprit of the city of Portland which was, if I might remind everyone here, built over an ancient unicorn burial ground.

Attending the confab along with Commissioner Randy "I'm not a meanie" Leonard were Dread Lord "Dave" Frohnmayer, Amanda Fritz, Dan "I'll Bet You've Forgotten I'm A City Commissioner" Saltzman, Nick "Nick Fish" Fish, the Black Unicorn, and the White Unicorn.

Special refreshments were brought in by a squadron of Keebler Elves.

Thank God we finally got this settled!

(Portland + Unicorns = AWESOME!)

Technorati Tags: Portland, Unicorns, Ancient Unicorn Burial Ground, memes, Portland Built On An Ancient Unicorn Burial Ground, Made In Oregon Sign, Made In Oregon, University of Oregon, Dave Frohnmayer, Randy Leonard, Portland City Council

The Portland Police Mounted Unicorn Patrol, Then and Now

1970.Unicorns have been with us longer and in more remarkable ways that you might know. Our researches have uncovered this previously unreleased photo of one of the first Portland Police Bureau Mounted Unicorn Patrols ... ca, 1891:

And in modern times (ca. "now"):

Stranger and stranger, inDEED! Our guess is that the more world-weary unicorns (the ones that don't need to be tamed by a virgin) try out for the mounted patrol.

It's entirely possible that the old legends about the unicorn is a bit wrong, of course. You know, everyone has a PR flack these days ...

Technorati Tags: Portland, Unicorns, Portland Unicorn Burial Ground, Portland Police Mounted Patrol, Portland Police Mounted Unicorn Patrol, Portland Unicorns

Randy Leonard and The Black Unicorn

1961.Back in the early days of the Attorney General campaign, Randy Leonard introduced John Kroger to the peoples at a photo-op in downtown Portland (the following photo from here):

It was the beginning of a successful campaign to put the most dynamic AG we've seen for a great long time in office.

But did they know they had a visitor? After analyzing the photo, we found out:

Yes. It's the Black Unicorn.

Did his presence bless the campaign? Was the Black Unicorn simply looking on (as unicorns are wont to do, keeping their own counsel, as they do)? We find something oddly compelling about Randy, maybe he does, too.

One thing's for certain; we've been analyzing photos from the Macpherson campaign for a while now. Not one unicorn ever went anywhere near him.

And so that one goes.

Technorati Tags: Portland built on an ancient unicorn burial ground, Portland, Unicorns, Portland Unicorns, teh funnay, Randy Leonard, John Kroger

Towards A More Postcard-Friendly Unicorn

1953.It has been pointed out to me that "UNICORNS BITCHEZ!!!111!!!" might not play so well amongst the more sophisticated amongst us (which I thought I wuz, but see how I am). So I've changed the type. Now available here for the asking, a more modest unicorn graphic with more warm and welcoming message:

Magical, yes?

I expect this to be up in the NYT within the week. It was meant to be.

Expect it in bus shelters soons after. If Travel Portland wants to use it, thaz' cool, just credit me.

NB: The Portland Photo is CC-SA-BY-2.5 licensed by Eric Baetscher. I got it from here. The unicorn graphic I scraped off my hard drive somewhere; if you recognize it, just shout out, and I'll credit.

Technorati Tags: Portland, Portland Humor, Unicorn Burial Ground, Portland Built On An Ancient Unicorn Burial Ground, liff, liff in PDX