Billowy Clouds over Division Street

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Sometimes, it's nothing more than distant, billowy, majestic clouds that do the trick for the eyes.

This was a few days back, and that there is a storm coming in, as we all found out. This is about 134th and Division, and this ...

... is just about 122nd and Division. And that's what I call home.

Mill Ends Park 2, Side of Olivia

3629

So, to show that not everything in these times of dexterity are dismal, I noted a thing that was meant to be temporary was still there and not in my photo library yet, so I went and got it, and a guest star besides.

Mill Ends Park is one of the most Portlandest things that ever Portlanded in Portland. Originally a post hole, it was first cared for by a columnist for the late, great Oregon Journal newspaper whose home was, at the time, a very large, white, double-masted building that vaguely resembled an art deco cruise liner where Tom McCall Waterfront park is now. Dick Fagan populated it with leprechauns and named if after his column, and eventually the hole, in the median of what we now call SW Naito Parkway at the foot of Taylor Street, became a local legend and then an official city park.

A 2-foot wide city park.

And over time small plants would be there and people would arrange little figures of people and dinosaurs and such and it was all very kind and fun. But sometime, about two years ago, some chowderhead cut the small tree that was growing there, out. And we all found out and it became one of the most Portlandest stories that ever Portlanded in the media, and everyone had the sad about it.

Somehow, during that time, almost as though in response to the destruction, someone got the idea that  the west side of the Willamette shouldn't have all the fun. And thus, in an asphalt island in the gore point of where SE Thorburn Street, a main route around the shoulder of Mount Tabor feeding East Burnside Street traffic down into downtown Montavilla, split into the couplet of SE Stark and Washington streets there, someone placed two planters, a sign, and a wooden sword in a wooden stone, and we got this:

The sign, while it looks kinda official, is not; Portland Parks and Recreation have said as much. But they're good sports about it all, and haven't disturbed it, and neither has anyone else.

And here's the fair Olivia, alongside:

Mill Ends Park 2, and Olivia: both actual size.

And so it goes.

Plague Year Diary: The Academy Theater, Montavilla, PDX

3628

This is the Academy Theater, at about 78th and SE Stark, in downtown Montavilla. Most weeks would be 2nd-run movies and a retro classic.

They're just playing the retro classic TEMPORARILY CLOSED right now. Its run seems to be getting extended just a s'kosh.

Plague Year Diary: Deserted Stark Street, Montavilla, PDX

3627

Montavilla, for those who don't know, is an old-school eastern Portland neighborhood with a good deal of history. Like a number of them, it has what amounts to a business district; a stretch of SE Stark St going east from where SE Thorburn Street splits into the Stark-Washington couplet, at about SE 74th Avenue, to SE 82nd Avenue; about a half mile's of street. It's one of those Portland neighborhoods with a little downtown, so to say; a rather darling place that would serve as the cute undiscovered downtown of a small town anywhere in the Willamette Valley hinterland. And it's fairly bustling; cars parked all up and down the street, people going to and from the taverns at 80th and Stark and the lumber yard across the street; the cute bistro at 78th, the Lebanese restaurant there.

Here's what it looked like today, though, in this second (third) week of Covid-19:

The brow of Mount Tabor overlooks a very quiet place today.

And here below I go to the gore point of where Thorburn devolves into Stark and Washington, stand in the middle of the street with plenty of time to get out the way, and hit that zoom, hard.

The TriMet bus there in the mid-distance is stopping to pick up passengers at 82nd and Stark. The street loses clarity at about the I-205 overpass, which means I'm taking in about a mile's worth of Stark here.

But there is still a tourist attraction of a sort. I'll post about that in about two missives from now.

Plague Year Diary: A Deserted City of Books

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And, as we came west from the freeway overpass, what trip downtown would be complete without a stop at Powell's?

No stop here today, or for a while yet. Alas.

And so it goes.

Plague Year Diary: West Burnside Looking East

3625

Another angle on Burnside coming from the other direction: West Burnside, heading east, at about 14th Avenue, crossing the overpass over I-405 (the Stadium Freeway).

On the right, in the distance, is the legendary Big Pink, the US Bancorp Tower. This is the first that I realized that that large black monolith is the building we call Yard PDX, and is on the east side of the river. Before that, that was just horizon. Portland, bulking up.

Closer, on the right just beyond the end of the overpass, is McMenamin's famous Crystal Ballroom concert hall. Closed, for the duration.

Ahead: plenty of room for you and your car.

Plague Year Diary: Crossing The Burnside Bridge

3624

A couple of shots now of the bridge that connects the east and west sides of Portland at its heart, the Burnside Bridge.

Clear sailing on a following breeze. Traffic is not an issue. This was in the middle of Tuesday afternoon this week.

After cresting the bridge and starting the downhill slope into downtown, one can look ahead and see the almost-empty West Burnside Street, ahead, under the trees. It is usually a throng of traffic not to be trifled with.

It is not so, today.

Plague Year Diary: 20th and East Burnside Looking West

3623

One of the places we went was down Burnside Street. Those of you have been following along for any length of time know that Burnside is an important street in the Portland layout: it splits town north from south: NW and NE Portland are north of Burnside and west and east of the river: respectively are placed SW and SE Portland.

This is 20th and East Burnside, looking west, on a weekday afternoon that would otherwise be quite busy.

But everyone's gone to the Moon.

Plague Year Diary 7: Broadway and Burnside - or - It Turns Out This Town Is More Than Big Enough For The Two Of Us

3622

After the apocalyptic feel of the previous photos I found I could top even that. And, as one will recall, I mentioned that no cars challenged me to get the hell out of the middle of the street in the middle of the afternoon on one of the busiest streets in the state of Oregon.

Let me prove this to you. After taking those two photos, I did a one-eighty and looked north, toward the intersection of West Burnside and Broadway. This is a big, wide intersection, not only because two very arterial streets cross, but also because of the vicissitudes of the way the plats north of and south of Burnside collide, the two streets don't precisely line up, creating a big, distended open square where Broadway, Burnside and Ankeny all come together. And it is nearly impossible, therefore, to render a scene like this:

All those cars are parked. There is not one car moving. In the middle of Oregon's largest city, where some 650,000 people live, at the intersection of two of its most important streets.

Yeah. The earth has shifted underneath us all.

Plague Year Diary 6: The Quietest Broadway I've Ever Seen

3621

Moving on with selected scenes from today, I give you what may be one of the busiest streets in Oregon: Southwest Broadway, downtown Portland, the largest city in Oregon and the 25th-largest in the United States of America.

This, remember, was the middle of the afternoon, on a Tuesday in March, 2020, and in on a planet without a COVID-19 world tour in progress, this street would be very busy indeed. I can easily count the number of moving cars in this shot on less than two hands.

Out on the heavy east side of town, I can debate with myself whether or not this is an abnormally-light traffic load. I can't have this discussion with myself downtown, though. This is not natural. And it's kind of starting to settle in on the mind just how shut-down my hometown is now.

Also, if I suggested that I stand in the middle of Southwest Broadway to take a picture of the street, in the middle of the day, one might consider me a daredevil on the order and intelligence of Super Dave Osborne.

Yet, that's what I did just here:

As a matter of fact, I was standing, mid-block, in the middle of Southwest Broadway, between Oak and Harvey Milk Streets (that's the legendary Benson Hotel there on the immediate right, with the Federal Protective Service cruiser parked in front) for well over two or three minutes. No cars challenged me to GTF out of the way. I was in no physical danger at all.

No cars challenged me. Not one.

Plague Year Diary 5: The Emptiness of East Burnside

3620

We went out today to get a look at our world. It's gotten kind of eerie.

This and the next two or three postings will give you a look at how little activity we saw. Now, out here, in Outer East Portlandia, as I've said before, it's a little hard to call. The amount of traffic out here tends to vary and I keep a vampire's hours and weekends, so I normally see a light traffic flow. Also, though, as also noted, my impression of my flip-side surroundings has been that of a lighter throng.

This picture is of East Burnside St looking west from about 60th Avenue.

Another thing I'd like to note is that these pictures were taken mid-afternoon, on a Tuesday, at about the time Portland's now-legendary rush hour starts.

Now, this angle takes in a stretch from 60th to about 50th, about 1/2 a mile. That ziggurat in the distance is Big Pink (the US Bancorp Tower) which is, if you aren't familiar with PDX and I haven't mentioned it (and I'd be surprised if I didn't) is a 42-floor tower and the second-tallest building in Oregon at 536 feet. And beyond that is Portland's West Hills. There are 20 city blocks to the mile in PDX, so that should give you some idea of the depth of field.

I count only three cars along this half-to-three-quarter-mile stretch of East Burn. In the middle of the afternoon, in traffic-choked Portland.

It gets lonelier. Stay tuned.

Plague Year Diary 4: Executive Order 20-12

3619

The hammer fell just after 11AM.

A quick first-pass read by your interlocutor:

Governor Kate Brown's Executive Order, #20-12, clarifies and solidifies what's allowed and what's not allowed. Just about everything having to do with entertainment is closed, no restaurant dining areas for sit-in, all social and fraternal clubs, tattoo parlors, spas and beauty salons, indoor and outdoor malls. No public gatherings of any size. Any retail business that cannot implement and enforce a strong social distancing policy are to close immediately. Offices who can need to implement telework, those who can't must implement strong social distancing policies. If one must commute into an office, one must follow social distancing best-practices, maintaining 6 feet of separation from everyone else.

Gas stations and grocery stores, places where one must get necessities, and restaurants offering take-out, seem to be allowed to operate, and all patrons need to observe social distancing as much as they can.

There is a link to the Governor's Executive Order at the Oregon Coronavirus State Resources page:

https://coronavirus.oregon.gov
This is a link directly to the press release posted at 11:30 AM approx.
This is a link directly to the PDF of the Executive Order.

Violaton of the Executive Order is a Class C misdemeanor, which carries a penalty of up to 30 days in jail, a fine of up to $1,250, or both.

Updated: Here's a graphic posted to Facebook by the Governor's office which makes it nice and neat.

Plague Year Diary 3: NE 122nd Ave, Tonkin, And The Closed Church

3618

Good day, everyone. In this third day of the Plague Year missive series we wait in front of our keyboard with bated breath. Today, you see, is the day that everyone expects Governor Brown to bring the hammer down; in about an hour from the time I type these words, an Oregonized version of the so-called "Shelter In Place" is to be announced for the entire 90,000 + square miles that comprise the State of Oregon. The interdiction along the west coast of the United States of America will be complete.

From today, if you don't work in a job considered essential, your business will be expected to close, I understand; if you work in an office, your employer will be expected to enable you to telecommute if at all possible. Saving this, you're going to be out of work for the duration of the order. Criminal penalties will pertain; Class C misdemeanor at the very least.

Today, the drive home was down 122nd Avenue, my own street. I don't know what I should expect to expect; the melodramatic in me keeps being surprised I'm not driving down wide open, roaringly quiescent streets out of a cross between Twin Peaks and The Omega Man. But this was NE 122nd Avenue at Stark, facing south, at about 7:20 AM, today:

Yesterday, I posted a picture of NE 82nd Avenue devoid of all but the most minimal traffice, but being it was Sunday morning it was a hard thing to argue that it was especial. This, however? This is about 7:30 on a Monday morning, and I can tell you from deep experience that this is, while not a desert, markedly, remarkably quiet. The landmark Tonkin sign holding court with very few in attendance.

Nearer my house, on SE 117th and Market, there is the Gethsemane Lutheran Church, which is a modern design structure that looks for all the world like a pyramid from the corner. I've written of it before. Today on the sign, which has supported a number of messages over the years, this:

This is the sort of message that, a year after the apocalypse, stands in disarray as I drive past in Olivia, using judiciously what gas I can find, and a stray air current I caused makes the N in UNTIL, up to that point ajar, finally give way and fall to the plinth below, shattering with a gentle, brittle tinkling of whatever material it's made of.

And so it goes.

Plague Year Diary 2: NE 82nd Avenue and The Gateway WinCo

3617

Out and about this chilly morning in Portland, but not going directly home. We have a little adventure in mind.

Specifically, to put fuel into Olivia the VW and to the Gateway WinCo store, to acquire but a single package of backup toilet paper. Which sounds kind of wrong in absolute terms, but that's what it is.

Just one package.

From my workplace I use an alternative way. NE Sandy Blvd to 82nd, then south on 82nd to Burnside. There's a Chevron there and we've been stopping regularly there for over 15 years now. It's got the best prices along that stretch of 82nd and the lowest prices near Chez ZehnKatzen. We've made several neat acquaintances amongst the staff there over the years. Good people.

Again, I note the perspective problem about working third-shifts and weekends: during times when the landscape's supposed to be unnaturally vacant, it's awful hard to discern any real difference. People, even in a big town like Portland, aren't really out during those hours. And while East 82nd Avenue is one of of the principle cross-town routes on the east side of Portland, even it has its lull during the flip-side hours.

I do fancy, though, I discern a difference. Herewith, a view south down NE 82nd at the crest of the hill alongside Madison High School:

I remember some quiet mornings on 82nd, but this is a bit unusual. That overpass is only a s'kosh less a mile away, it's the one that carries Halsey Street over 82nd and just north of the MAX station there. That's a lot of street, even at 7:15ish on a Sunday morning, not to have one thing moving, no activity of any kind.

I was able to take this from behind Olivia's wheel, stopping the car, without needing to worry about someone coming up on me from behind. That's how little traffic.

The lack of traffic was even more noticeable here, at NE 82nd and Holladay:

The nearest signal there is Glisan. Next in the distance is Burnside; after that, Stark/Washington. This is about three-quarters of a mile; only one car in all that space.

The filling of the Beetle was pleasant enough. The thing you have to be ready for about having a vintage VW Beetle is that people will chat you up about it; Beetles are friendly cars, and people are very affectionate toward them. There was a 20ish fellow helping about at the pumps there, and he couldn't stop admiring it. I like having a car that leaves people smiling.

That was the easy part. I was ready-steeling myself for the next stop: the WinCo on NE 102nd Ave, in downtown Gateway. I had seen the lines on TV and, because of the emergency, the hours are now 8 AM-Midnight.

24 Hour Savings have been reduced to 16 Hour Savings for the duration, and when I got there, there was indeed a line:

I made haste to the end of this line, which added a few more shoppers before I joined. Attired as I was in my regular street clothes, including tattered suit jacket and Birthday Hat, it was a little uncomfortable - it was in the thirties still, but I managed to hack out the 30-minute wait to get in the store.

I don't know if it's part of the stress on the general zeitgeist but something had gotten under the hood of this one man. He was about six-three, black man, dark pants, peacoat, who wandered up and down the traffic lane there alongside the store, and alternated between being upset and doing a peculiar little dance and chant.

When I'd gotten there he seemed to be mad at the building and kept berating it for "sucking the dick of EMPIRE!". He transitioned from this to doing a little bouncing dance on the balls of his feet and spreading his arms out in a symmetrical robot-like wave, and his chant went into a repetition which went something like

Work it!
Work that BODY!
Work it OUT!
Or figure it OUT!

He then made some sort of reference to working it out like Batman, then folding in a reference to Superman, then going back to accusing the building to sucking the dick of empire again. We in the line collectively warily watched him and we all kept our 6 feet of personal space, and there seemed also to be this unspoken understanding that as long as he kept in the traffic lane and his distance thereon we were all the coolest of cool, and he could do his bit and we could enjoy the entertainment, such as it was.

I was, it will be doubtless a relief to all, able to score some toilet tissue. The offerings were restocked, but not with much. I was hoping for our usual brand but there was only MD and Angel Soft and the cushy stuff to be had, and the pickings were still quite slim; only a fraction of the paper aisle had been restocked. Between the lean toilet roll offerings and the equally-lean paper towel offerings there was still a great deal of clear shelf space. We can only be so choosy these days and, alas, this household will have to get off Scott-free for just a little while.

Also a 40-lb bag of cat litter; the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee needs its toilet needs seen to, too.

Thence to home.

And so it goes.

Plague Year Diary 1: Interstate 205

3616

The news has indeed come to a pretty pass, hasn't it?

As of this writing, the economy has all but wholly deactivated. Locally, it was like a clacking fall of clunking dominoes. I remember it really begun to happen for me a week and a half ago.

Me and The Brown Eyed Girl were in the Gresham branch of the mighty Multnomah County Library, enjoying what would become, though we didn't know it then, the last visit to our power source for the foreseeable future. I was plugged in to the net, as 'ere I am any more, and I learnt that the NBA was suspending the season.

Dominoes,  I thought. I know I can't be the only one. I couldn't have been that deep an insight. But the business juggernaut that is major league sports in America doesn't just fool around and ghost on you. The only thing that I don't think neither I nor many foresaw was how deep things would go. Between now and then, in rough approximate order, large gatherings about the state of Oregon were declared verboten; first 250, then 25. Then the governor had clubs and bars and restaurants closed (takeout being gratefully available). Then the Library closed (until further notice). Then Powell's.

This takes us up to last Tuesday. The weekend, which for me runs Tuesday-Wednesday these days, was long and languid and didn't involve going out anywhere (where was there? Our two main jams had been silenced), except the grocery store, where we got what we needed but saw the cleared shelves of pasta, the legendarily denuded shelves that stocked toilet tissue, the bins in the WinCo bulk aisles devoid of even the merest speck of flour and not one solitary dry bean.

We rewarded our fortitude by feasting on Chinese from Rainbow Dragon at 130th and Stark, for three reasons: one, it helps keep a beloved place in business during this bizarre time; two, it sticks a finger in the eye of people who apparently, we've heard, think that coronavirus is transmitted by Chinese peoplle; and, three, in my world you don't actually need reasons to eat Chinese food.

As of today we stand on the brink of a statewide order to stay the fuck home unless you have a good reason to be out in the open. Me, at this point, still have a job to go to. At this point, we'll leave it at this: I work in the transportation industry, and right now that's all you're getting out of me. My company has seen layoffs and we are operating at an absolute minimum of staff; it's also helps to be at the head of the seniority list in a union shop. But I, unlike many, still have a job to go to ... at least for now.

Which kind of brings me to the pictures I'm illustrating with. I work near the Portland International Airport. One of my favored commute routes, for many years, ecompasses I-205 from Exit 23B - Killingsworth Street - to Exit 21 - Glisan Street. The slick new electronic signs which are meant to give you estimated transit times to important junctions ahead no longer have their colorful displays. Up the hill and around the east side of the hill we call Rocky Butte, the signs read as pictured:

GIVE EXTRA SPACE

TO EACH OTHER

AND ON THE ROAD

The other direction has a simpler message:

COVID-19

AVOID

LARGE GROUPS

This is meant to encourage not only safe driving (always commendable) but also to instill, if even a minor way, the new gospel of social distancing which is meant to keep us all far enough apart so as not to give each other the gift of novel coronavirus. 

It does not appear to be wholly effective as there is talk of Oregonizing the so-called 'shelter in place' strategy. How that will be implemented remains to be seen, but they say we should know something by Monday.

The freeway seems empty but that's not wholly unexpected for Saturday. The only difficulty with working 3rd shift and weekends is that it kind of always looks like this.

But the tension in the air? You can almost see it, these days.

So it goes.

Storm Clouds over Foster Road, December 2019.

3615

Looking through my personal photo stock for picture approximating the mood. This was taken outside Speedboat Coffee on SE Foster Road, looking west. The looming upper cloud boundary and the way the dark velvet sky gradated into the light twilight blue made the whole scene click together in a memorable way.

Wy'east March Cloudcap

3614

From snow a day ago to balmy weather now. The end of the world's at least got sunny weather and good views?

Today, Wy'east put on his cap.

Another Olivia-enabled picture. The field in foreground, as usual, thoughtfully provided by Rossi Farms. Long may they grow.

Wy'east Sunrise, On Foot

3613

A few weeks back, I was still Olivia-less, and was legging it one morning to the Parkrose-Sumner Transit Center, and stopped on the grassy slope overlooking Killingsworth St and saw this.

The reason I snapped it should be self-evident.

Delicious sunrise colors, yes?

Parkrose Sunrise

3612

Here's the sunrise that presented itself to me this morning. The view here is down NE Sandy Blvd from about NE 115th.

Most notable is the big macho bank of clouds behind Larch Mountain there, forcing the rays up and making them illuminate the clouds above them.

This is a view from Killingsworth just west of I-205; the blocky industrial forms there on the left is the Owens-Illinois glass plant. Delicious warm reds and oranges belie the fact it was quite cold this morning, the day after the snow storm.

March, 2020 and Snow in Portland

3611

You just can't scrute the Gods of Cascadian weather these days.

Going into the weekend we heard of a chance (as uttered by our properly-reticent Portland weather people, who know when not to take a chance on such things) of snow. Global warming notwithstanding, it does rarely happen in Oregon and the Northwest; I even remember a freak April snow when I was but a neat thing in Silverton.

But that was then and this is now, and we all figured that a chance, around here, was as good as nothing. And then, on Saturday morning, this:

Say hello to Olivia, who's back in service, gadding me about as I need. Yes, it feels as good as I figured it would.

Here's NE 122nd near Sacramento:

... and here's Gethsemane Lutheran Church, near the Chez, corner 117th and SE Market. Mod design on it. Looks like a pyramid from this angle, which is a strange Christian aesthetic, but there's no accounting for interpretive style.

This makes for a true change in regime, climate-wise. Because when I was a kid, snow happened in the mountains and everywhere else but the Willamette Valley. Winters were gray. But now, just about every winter for the last several, there's been a chance of snow that's manifested itself in a storm (sometimes, remarkably so).

North Portland Roads and Highways

3610

Herewith, a little trivial crumb that you can use to win bets and amuse people at parties, if they were the parties that existed and the sorts that I would attend. They involve Portland street names, because that's the way I roll.

1. NE Portland Highway. There is a road near the margins of North and Northeast Portland called Lombard Street. This totally like the Lombard in San Francisco, except ours is very long and doesn't go up hills and is in fact made of long, straight segments. Except for that, it's just like SF's Lombard Street. In as much as it's a street. It's also badged in the US Hwy System as US 30 Bypass and is one of the principal arterials across the north side of the Rose City.

First, a necessary digression: ODOT, as I may have said elsewhere but maybe is worth repeating now, has a way of numbering state highways that does not coincide with the posted highway numbers. Also, in the vulgate parlance, when someone says 'Highway' or 'State Hwy', what we mean is the route number, that is the one you'll see on the signs. What locals call Highway 213, which runs from the east side of Portland through Oregon City, the farmlands of Clackamas, past Molalla, through Silverton and into Salem is known, from Portland through about Silverton as State Hwy No.68 - Cascade Hwy North, and from there through Salem as State Hwy No. 160 - Cascade Hwy South.

Think of it like a catalog number. You'll order a Deluxe Whizzit with extra froom-froom rom Whizzit World but they also know it as Catalog No 67-325. But you wouldn't call it by Catalog number.

So! Since the posted route number is technically a State Route, and in this case an Oregon Route, when, in times future, I talk of a state highway by its route number, the nomenclature will be, in this case, for Oregon Route 213, OR 213. We don't say State Route or SR here, that's Washington, folks. Get it straight. We used to escort people back to the border for that.

Anyhow, and to get us back on course, the reason I told you that is because, even though Lombard Street isn't a Oregon highway route, it's maintained by the state and is classified as an Oregon highway, No. 123, as it would occur. And those viewing maps or travelling down this road east of NE 42nd Avenue but west of where it merges with NE Killingsworth will notice it goes by a particularly generic name: NE Portland Hwy. 

While I don't have any way to run down why those who decided decided to change it where it is, I can tell you that the state's name for this highway is the Northeast Portland Highway. As State Hwy No. 123, it runs from Saint Johns, starting just across the river at Hwy 30 via the St Johns Bridge, all along Lombard Street and along Killingsworth and Sandy out to Troutdale.

But for that part between 42nd and approximately 72nd, where the city apparently decided adopting ODOT's name for the road was enough, and convenient too; it already contained the directional.

2. N Portland Road. Going north out of the Saint John's neighborhood, there is a road that runs along the railroad embankment from approximately where N Columbia Blvd goes over N Columbia Way to the south shore of the Columbia River at N Marine Drive. It's called North Portland Road. As Eugene E Snyder tells us, that was so named because there is a station along the railroad (the railroad equivalent of a wide spot in the road, trains never actually stopped there) which was itself called North Portland. When the street namers went out that way it must have seemed natural to call it North Portland Road, as it went out to that place, but when the Great Renaming came round in the 1930s, as the road itself would fall in the North quadrant, calling it North North Portland Road must have seemed a bit goofy. Once again, the historic name handily provided the necessary directional.

It too is a state highway: Hwy No. 120, Swift Highway ... not because it was a direct route into the area from the nearby stockyards, but because that used to be Portland's meat packing district, and Swift was the largest company. We also have a N Swift Street in the St Johns area dedicated to that memory.

State Hwy 120 is also one of the many unsigned state highways that adopted those numbers as state routes back in 2002. The majority of these are still unsigned; one not otherwise informed would never know a priori that N Portland Rd was also OR 120. Presumably ODOT's priorities lay elsewhere and, the way things are going in government these days, I wouldn't be the least surprised.

Wy'East and Classic Chevy

3609

During a voyage involving periodic care for Olivia, we were out 122nd way by Rossi Farms. We got pictures.

We also got a sweet picture of this mid-60s Chevy Impala. They go well together.

Don't Call Me A "Trekkie". I'm Not Quite That Good.

3608

Conversations with strangers can spark strange trains of thought.

Follow me down this path if you will

On the intentionally-overpopulated left lapel of the tattered suit jacket I insist on using as daily street-wear (I am for being a semi-feral middle-aged guy and I take this most seriously, I tell you true), up at the top, is a brass-toned emblem which has come to be known as the 'Starfleet Delta'. Most non-Trek fans I know know it aptly as the chest communicator wearable device in Next Gen and forward; prior to that it was a chest patch on the classic Trek unis.

If you need any more introduction than that, welcome back from your desert island, friend; there's probably an orientation session for your re-entry to society and you should be running along to that and, BTW Nixon was impeached, o-yes-where-was-I? Oh.

This has a sort of pride-of-place at the top of the button-and-pin cascade of what other people would call one's left jacket lapel. I have three of them as personal posessions: One with the Engineering division logo, one with the Science division logo, and this one, with a lower-case gamma. This was inspired, I believe, by the cover sheet to the "General" section of The Book (the Star Fleet Technical Manual, my nick name for it vocally rendered in the style of Vic Tayback's character in "A Piece of the Action", please and thanks) which showed the Delta filled in by that same character and, though never an actual division insignia was adapted as such by the maker of the pin.

I don't have a Command division insignia. I never was the Captain type.

But when I was dropping cans as the Bottle Drop over by 122nd and Glisan, which I can do now that we're Olivia re-enabled, a person waiting on-line to get in at opening called me a Trekkie and we discussed things Trek for a while and I had a thought about that, because he asked me if I was, in fact, a Trekkie, and I realized, in that moment, that I couldn't quite wholeheartedly think that I really deserved to be called that.

Understand this: I am a fan and adore Star Trek, will do down to my dying breath on this tiny planet. It's not that, as in those days when your Trek-fan might clear their throat and insist "I prefer Trekker, thank you." I've always loved the term and never saw it as an insult. Caught every Trek re-run back when that was the only Trek  there was to have. Even owned a copy of Mission to Horatius.

No, I am reluctant to accept the label because Trekkies are a higher form of fan than I am. I have yet to watch any Discovery or Picard; as a matter of fact, I don't much care for the de-democratization of Trek that streaming channels promise to bring us. But sometimes the best thing I can do is watch an episode of TOS (even the crappier episodes). Star Trek: The Motion Picture is still one of my favorite movies, even though maturity has brought me to terms with the fact that the story was pretty lame (even then, though, I was figuring nice try kicking your game up to Star Wars level, guys ... If you would have told me that movie was the root of a sprawling franchise I would have thought you mad).

But I know people who Trek harder than me just getting out of bed in the morning. I admire and respect them. 'Tis they who deserve the rubric of Trekkie ... not I.

And I'm Okay with that.

The 1994 Map Of Silverton, Oregon

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I've been on a deep dive through more than 20 years of collected paper ... maps, many of which I've collected, a great deal of which I've drawn myself, because city maps were always a passion for me.

I'm proud to call myself a Portlander, but my birthplace, along with several greats and other near-greats, was (and still is) a place called Silverton.

When I was a kid, life was not always kind. I was the bullied one, that one in every class, the one that kids let new kids know about so they have a head start on it.

That was then. I lived. One of the things I did to make me feel good was to deep dive into maps. I soon discovered I was transfixed by the patterns of streets, the way they ordered themselves amongst each other, the shapes and patterns of blocks, the shapes created by the city limits and the way the pattern of streets lived withing them. And, perhaps in what I should have seen as a presage of blunted ambitions, just as I got to the grade in Mark Twain Junior High (as it was then) and was in the middle of a class on how to draw a map of Silverton ... that's when we moved to Salem.

It's okay. It is what it is, or what it was. I wanted out into the wider world anyway; Silverton, as it was, was a small, stifling place. Had I been born there and grew up in the Sliverton that exists today, I may well have stayed. It's certainly not the same place.

But as you can take the boy out of Silverton, you cannot fully take Silverton out of the boy, and there is a corner of my mind that remains posessed of the place, the rearview seasoned to a large degree by the sepia tones of nostalgia. The parts of my childhood in Silverton that were kind? They were quite nice. We lived in a house on the edge of town a road that still has an awesome name (Steelhammer) and I had a bedroom that had a dormer window that looked east across the fields north and east of town. My mom worked her tail off; we never felt poor. On clear days, Mount Hood/Wy'east  could be easily seen, starting a visual love affair that continues unabated to the present day.

In 1994, still nurturing dreams of becoming a drafter or somehow working my way into drawing city maps for a living, I took an ODOT map of Silverton dated 1986 and created my own. Here's what it looks like:

This is Silverton very close to the way it was when I was in elementary school. Things changed very slowly in Silverton, if and when they changed at all: comparing this map to a modern map shows the city boundary flung out considerably in just about every direction, encompassing a couple of wholly new neighborhoods on the east and south edges of town; especially on the south and west to rope in the Oregon Garden (if you had told me as a kid that Silverton would eventually become a tourist destination, I'd have thought you un-sane). Silverton as I knew it scarcely had more 4,500 people; now there are more than 10,000, and it has become a hub of art and culture.

You know how you feel when your ex goes off and finishes themselves and become magnificent and your still struggling to get your stuff together? I know what that's like, only it's with my old hometown. Anyhow.

Here's a detail of the city center:

Starting from a primly-gridded downtown and city center, Silverton just grew any old way it pleased. The leg-shaped extension of the city going south was constrained by the narrowing valley that Silver Creek flowed out of. The grid tried to right itself on the east, but just kind of straggled up the hill on the west; the northwest corner of the city seemed to have its own ideas. North Water street became an east-west street. And up near a mill on the north edge of town which had become a manufactured-home plant by the time I existed, a tidy 3-by-4 block grid became its own neighborhood: Milltown (which, as it happens, was what Silverton was called before it was called Silverton).

And this is a detail of my side of town:

If you follow East Main Street to where it ends there at Steelhammer Road, and follow it south past where Reserve Street ends, there's a segment between Reserve and the bend where it becomes Evans Valley Road which is where my childhood home was, about dead center in that segment. The house I was a child in still exists, but there is what looks like an upscale cabinet maker there now. in the area south of Reserve and between the city limits then and Steelhammer/East View Lane that was an absolute blank and as I knew it then was a bramble-filled gully is now a capacious subdivision full of what I can only assume are fairly-expensive homes, all of which have been annexed into the city ...

... except for my old home. The city limits dance around it. Still just outside of town. I find this too cosmically funny to put into any effective words. Never mind the glandular subdivision that's sprung up at the south end of town, around the intersection of Hwy 214 (South Water Street) and Ike Mooney Road.

The area I lived in there was called by adults East Hill (West Hill being the opposite side of Silver Creek, where West Main Street ascended the heights) and was called by us kids Danger Hill: at the foot of it, just east of Third Street, where East Main ascended in about a 5% grade, a red diamond sign proclaimed DANGER and a rectangular sign below it explained HILL. Danger Hill. I don't know how they deal with it these days; those houses on East Main between Fifth and Rock, which are perched on that slope, must have some pretty nervy days when its icy or when the snow that seems to visit us more often comes to pay another visit.

Sic transit gloria iuventae, and all that. So it goes.

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 Prodigal VW

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Today, Olivia returned to us.

Seven months ago, more or less, this was the scene in front of Chez ZehnKatzen:

The beloved Olivia, bricked engine and all, being loaded on a flatbed for the transit to repair.

This is about 7 months ago, when Olivia was being transported over to FixUm Haus on North Lombard, about 13 miles away (Portland feels like a small town until one has to get across it). Danny from Team Towing did the work and, as I said on the blog, if there's a more squarely professional driver on this earth I've not met them yet. 

Coming home from FixUm Haus was bliss in a very real way. Lombard turned to Portland Highway to Killingsworth to Sandy Blvd, then south on 122nd to the home ground. As pleasant as all that was, the part of the drive on 122nd was absolutely the best.

But, alas! I had left the exported tool bag (with my car stereo's face place) home. No matter. I sang Al Stewart songs. "Lord Grenville", "Time Passages" and "On the Border".

That last one twice. It's amongst my favorites.

My singing voice ain't half bad. Maybe I should have done that for a living.

And so it goes ... vroom vroom. Fahrvergnuegen, and all that.

Bus Stop

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The access point to homeward-boundedness, during the interregnum.

I got to knew TriMet very well during the time without a VW, and this will stay in my mind as a fond memory.

When Your Transit System Pins You

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During the past several months I've been Olivia-less, I've been using TriMet to get to and fro in my workaday travels. I do like to collect the pins for the lapels (I'm becoming one of that sort of olding) and one of the bus drivers asked if I'd like a pin and, of course, being the anthropomorphic corvid that I am, said yes.

A couple of weeks later, she bestowed upon me this fancy:

The logo for TriMet's new 24-hour SErvice lines, the closest thing the agency's had to an 'Owl' route since 1986. There are three lines that run into the after-hours zone: 57-Forest Grove/TV Hwy, 20-Burnside/Stark, and 272-PDX Night Bus. Strictly speaking, the 272 isn't a 24-hour run; it has three or four round trips connecting to the 20 near 82nd and Burnside in the Montavilla nabe and letting you get to the 'port during the hours when MAX isn't running.

It's scant but important, I'm hoping it's the beginning of a trend, but if you need to get to the airport and you live on a straight line between Forest Grove and Gresham then, buddy, your never more than 60 minutes away from a TriMet ride.

24 hours a day.

And I have a memento.

Darkness Over Parkrose/Sumner TC

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Also in the last couple of days there was some dramatic cloud cover serving as a very dramatic backdrop to the Parkrose/Sumner Transit Center.

 It made the old-fashioned neon at the Jim Dandy burger dive, a fixture in this area since the 1940s, stand out with the warm-hearted nostalgia that is built into such a thing.

 Though there are four pullouts on the south side of the transit center drive, only one is a bus stop ... this one. The 71-60th Avenue and 73-122nd Avenue are the west and east halves, respectively, of what was once a single route: the 71-60th/122nd. You now have to transfer to use the whole route, though if you're travelling the whole thing, you're doing this big inverted U across Portland's east side, which is not something a commuter's likely to do.

The two routs alternate stopping here, while the others that serve the route layover in the three pullouts behind it. It's a frequent service line, which means that you aren't late for one (unless that was the one you needed), just early for the next.

The Magic TriMet Anniversary Bus

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This year, 2019-2020, is the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, or, as we've called it, TriMet; Portland's very own, trendsetting, multi-modal wonder.

TriMet has tied the three counties of the Portland Metro together since about 1969, when it was formed from the remains of, amongst other things, a private transit company called Rose City Transit. Back then it as just buses; these days, it's everything except planes.

Back in those days, the buses were pretty plain. You, can, if you're lucky, get a look at what it was like, because one of the buses is wrapped in the livery of those days: a utilitarian orange, white, and silver, with the original logo design on.

I spotted the anniversary bus one morning recently at the Parkrose Sumner TC, running on line 71-60th Avenue:

The paint job looks pretty solid, and the trick of the windows is like those graphic screens that restaurants like Denny's use to put an ad on the window and still allow you to see out. It's really obvious when it runs past you and the interior lights are on when it's dark out.

As memories go, also ... it's a pretty pleasant one.