The Blue Heart Of Portland

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Looking south from the vicinity of the Steel Bridge is looking up-river along the Willamette, in the reach that extends through Portland's veriest city center. There are many bridges and so very many new buildings, most of which you see in this shot did not exist fifteen years ago (again, same planet, different world ... Saint Ursula was prescient in a way).

On the right, downtown; on the left, the burgeoning central east side. Going from foreground to background we see, in whole, the Burnside Bridge, and in parts: the Morrison Bridge, the Hawthorne Bridge, the Marquam Bridge arching above them all, and if you look sharp, one of the towers of the Tilikum Crossing. 

And this is Portland's Blue Heart. 

Steel Bridge With Railway Line

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Another of the Steel Bridge, but this time from a slightly more distanct POV.

Just back of the Oregon Convention Center, NE Lloyd Blvd curves northward to meet Interstate Avenue and Oregon Street at the east end of the Steel Bridge. By aiming the camera lens through the bars that prevent people from throwing stuff and climbing down, we get a view that includes a bit of the railway line for a foreground effect that's kind of iron-punk.

I enjoy the graffiti here. The graffiti in these areas always has the artistic touch to it, not some sloppy hit'n'run tag, but some real detail and thought.

The Burnside Bridgehead Has A Skyline Now

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... and no, its not a brand new thing. But it is a thing which struck me of having some big-town weight all of a sudden, when I stood back to look at it, this day.

Once upon a time, both 25 years ago but also a hundred million, the area where the east end of the Burnside Bridge tied into the street grid ... the corner of MLK and E Burnside ... there was homeless men's service center called Baloney Joe's. And there was a building that was famous for being in a state of semi-renovation, the Bridgeport Hotel; about five floors of disused building and three or four more floors of just steel girder frame, and the big question was, would anything ever come of that. 

Well, come forward a quarter-century and hundreds of millions of developer dollars, and we have our answer. Fashionable renovations, if-you-have-to-ask-you-cant-afford-it apartment high-rises, and a complete obliteration of what-was-once-was in favor of what-it-now-is. And now, in a place where we once fretted there'd be a Home Depot (seriously, that's what they once had envisioned for the block bounded by MLK/Couch/Burnside/NE 3rd) we have been bowled over by what now looks like a second downtown, or a shiny new business district any town of 75,000 to 100,000 would be thrilled to call their own (even with the Fair-Haired Dumbell). 

Once, just a homeless shelter and a handful of old buildings with furniture stores. Now, same planet ... but a different world.

Downtown Portland As Seen From The MLK Overpass

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I've taken many many pictures of the downtown Portland skyline, but I don't recall ever snapping one from the MLK overpass over I-84. 

The brick-red lane almost all the way across the street from my station is the east leg of the inner streetcar loop. Between downtown and me, two lanes of the I-84 ramps to and from I-5 can be seen. And, there are skyscrapers there that haven't been there all that long. 

That's changes. But they don't compare to the changes I'll show off in the next missive. 

The Multimodal Bridge

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Multimodal is a funny word. It's clear what it means but it gets used so much by city and transit planners it sounds like one of those power-buzzwords that get hammered to death on resumes.

But multimodal is what the Steel Bridge is, a bridge that, in its hardworking way, links the halves of Portland like no other. Here it is, doing what it does best. Multimodally.

There was, back in the 1980s, before there were multiple MAX lines, the possibility of driving through the middle part of the structure, where that oncoming MAX is right now. It was fun to find yourself driving in front of a train, or with one on the left side of you. As the lines multiplied, though, they took the middle of the bridge for MAX lines only, and relegated cars to the two outside lanes. 

The approaches to the bridge have seen much revision over the past 40 years. 

Willamette River Close-up at the Steel Bridge

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The zooming in to make the bridge frame the glimpses of city beyond is always a bit of an irresistible compulsion to me, as is bumping the color up a little.

It's the struggle between fidelity to reality and fidelity to memory; the colors may be more vivid than they were in reality, but they're exactly as vivid as they are in memory. And the satisfaction in devolving the shapes in the girders and the structures they frame by disconnecting them from what they connect to in the greater sense, that makes them make more sense, and making them a more abstract thing is something I also cannot turn away from, and it's satisfying

.  For information's sake, the red truss over the river beyond the supports to the Steel is part of the Broadway Bridge, and the small blocky apartments was once known as McCormick Pier, though it may well have changed its name. Everything down in that area of town has. 

Even the graffiti seems to support the artistic view of the place.

The Steel Bridge, Portland, Oregon, 2021

3842

This is a steel bridge, and it's called the Steel Bridge, and, at one time, it connected the east and west sides of the Willamette River, in Portland, in a pivotal way by being the route US 99W, later OR-99W, crossed the river. Now, it's the pivotal point in the TriMet rail system, carrying all MAX lines over the river except, I suppose, the Orange Line, though the Orange, which brings people in from Milwaukie, becomes north Portland's Yellow Line as it courses through the Transit Mall. At least, I think it does.

It's not the first photo I've ever taken of the Steel, but it's one of the best. It shows off all the charming detail and some of the structural features that make it so unique.

There's an elbow bend of the Willamette in the center of Portland, just north of where the Burnside Bridge crosses, and this is about the narrowest point of the river within Portland city limits. It's at this point the Steel crosses. 

The original Steel Bridge was a swing span in this location, but the current bridge dates from 1912, making it 119 years old, more or less, at this writing. It can be seen from this angle that it's a double-deck bridge and that rail and bike/ped traffic has the bottom whereas car and rail traffic has the top. What's unique about that drawspan is that the bottom retracts into the top, meaning when river traffic needs to pass, if it can clear the un-lifted traffic deck only the lower rail deck needs to lift. 

This makes the lower deck dangerous to be on if one should be so foolish as to use the inside rail deck as your crossing. We recall stories of people being trapped on that deck on lifting, before there was a ped/bike walkway there; their destiny was to be crushed to death between the two decks. 

The bridge in this shot is doing what it does best, linking the east and west sides of the Rose City via transit-rail; a newer MAX bound to the Rose Quarter, an older MAX bound for the Portland Mall. Wikipedia claims it's perhaps the most 'multimodal' bridge in the world; the only double-deck lift bridge with independent lifts, and the second-oldest vertical-lift bridge in the world, second only to the Hawthorne, which is just around the corner. 

It's old and new, rustic and modern. A contradiction in terms that somehow makes perfect sense.

Stark Street, Downtown Montavilla, April 2021

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This is a picture I've taken before but I was in the right spot today, so I took it again. 

This was part of me and the Brown Eyed Girl's sojourn to get her her 2nd Pfizer Covid vaccine dose, amongst other things. I did a bunch of walking. And, in the afterglow of known my spouse is fully vaccinated, and all the errands are run, I have about 160 photos taken on the day ... the most productive in a while.

I think the farthest one can see here at this angle is about SE 92nd Avenue; this was taken where Stark and Washington devolve from SE Thorburn Street at abut SE 74th. So, about a mile.

More, as usual to come. Also a few more views of Rocky Butte. 

On A Clear Day, You Can See Vancouver

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I guess I'm on a Rocky Butte tear today. So be it.

The majority of the sightline pictures of my Rocky Butte posting flux were looking east, and I suppose I have an excuse for that, as the Cascade Range is simply a fantastic thing to gaze at and I every day thank the cosmic chance that caused me to come to be here, in this area, because visually I never tire of being alive here. 

Looking east from Rocky Butte is engaging, for different reasons. You look upon Portland's undulating east side, ranks of houses and streets, many many trees, and there's always north of the Columbia.

Dig, if you will ...

I will now amuse myself (and bemuse you, the reader) by pointing out some things in the photo.

That blue swath across the middle is, of course, the mighty Columbia. On this side of the river, closest in, that area of beige flat-top industrial buildings shows where NE Killingsworth St (at this time next year, NE Lombard St, remember) runs east from 82nd. That peculiar-looking double-humped building, the blue gray edifice, is the Boeing Paint Hangar. 

Yep, that's where planes get painted. Also visible there are some jets, presumably in the finishing stages, and to the right of those, the clear area just south and west of PDX, which is a good place to put a Brobdingnagian painting booth for your jet planes. 

The bridge right about dead-center in the photograph is the Interstate Bridge, carrying I-5 over the river into Washington. We'll be replacing that bridge in the next few years, unless we don't, like what happened the last time. Stay tuned there.  And just above and left of that is the railroad bridge, and just beyond that, another shipping ship. 

North bank: you'll notice some tall structures there. This is adjacent to downtown Vancouver, but it's not downtown Vancouver, its the port facilities that I picted a few weeks ago from the other side, from Kelley Point. Vancouver city center is the collection of low-slung blocky shapes immedately to the right of that. Vancouver city center is in a state of flux; they're building a new waterfront district, and developer money is flowing into the area like mad, and there's no plans for new high-rises, but the place is on the grow. 

Backing it all up on the horizon is that spur of the Coast Range we call the Tualatin Mountains, that part of which you'll find Forest Park in.

Wy'East Over Morning Traffic

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A throwback to December 2019: Wy'east, on a chill morning, while I was still using the ten-toe express to get to and from werk, during the Time-Of-No-Olivia.

I hated not having the VW (and it was causing no small amount of stress) but the scenery was a compensation.

Anyone reading this? I've a suggestion. Live your life as though you were a tourist there. Sight-see your world even if you've seen it a billion times before. I can only speak for myself here, but in a life in which I hunger for, and am largely bereft of artistic stimulation (we proles don't need art, you see), it's gotten me a hell of a long way. 

Joseph Wood Hill, Himself

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A hard-to-miss feature of Joseph Wood Hill Park is this; a monument with the face of the man who is its namesake.

Joseph Wood Hill came to Oregon in the late 1800s and opened a military academy in what is now NW Portland in 1901. Subsequently, in 1931, it moved to the foot of Rocky Butte, on its NW side; the Hill Military Academy existed there until 1959. The property, including many of the old buildings, is populated by the Portland Bible College and the northeast Portland branch of City Bible Church. 

Many of the street names in the area around where NE 92nd Avenue and Fremont Street merge were inspired by the presence of the old military academy.

Just The Balustrade At Joseph Wood Hill Park, Is All

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No animating imperative behind this photo except that the charming lamp posts, the curving balustrade, the pleasing shadow cast by said balustrade, an the evergreens beyond seemed to want to be in a picture.

The air is fair at the top of Rocky Butte. 

A Casual Review: Princeton "Snap!" and Select Brushes

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Though I never became the major influencer that I thought I'd become, I do use supplies and I do like them and like to tell other people about them, perforce I have an opinion and the 'Web is all about that.

As an aspiring artist, I use brushes. And when one starts out inventing themselves as such, one tends to hear advice reducing to don't shy away from spending what you can for the best you can get, which is true per se but doesn't help you home in on brands and varieties and price ranges and such, which is probably what you really wanted to know. Along the way, you'll hear sirens songs of sable brushes, blandishments to care properly for your brushes and they'll last forever (and if you let your acrylic dry in them, you'll just have an expensive stick), and sizes and shapes and whatnot. It's all a bit confusing.

Here's my experience so far.

When was painting the little acrylic 50-Paintings series (a few of which I have left to do) I got a bunch of Royal & Langnickel "Zen" brushes. They're fun to use but as I use them, I find the bristles don't stand up to regular use like I'd hoped. R&L is one of the more value-priced companies, and have achieved a certain reputation in the makeup world, and are inexpensive in the good way in the artist range, but it's a brand you start out with while you get acquainted with what's out there, and terminology and such.

The handles to Zen brushes are the prettiest mirrored ABS plastic, which makes them fun to look at, but one of mine has had the shiny outside start to peel off. And the bristles are prone to splaying out, even if you do take care of them.

Richeson "Gray Matter" brushes ... called as such because the neutral gray color of the bristles are supposed to visually facilitate using your color ... are more satisfying, however, they're harder to come by. And just getting a #2 round doesn't meant you'll get the same size: they have different series. They do perform well, though, and are a little higher priced though not egregiously so.

So, hop skip and jump through a thumbnail of my artist brush experience so far brings me where? Princeton Art Brush Company. They have two ranges that I'm really quite loving just now, and here is a picture of my latest:

Dig if you will this picture of three round brushes. The one at the top, with the blue handle, is a Princeton Select Artiste #2 round. The other two with green/black/blue handles, are Princeton SNAP! brushes, a #0 Round and #2 Round. All three employ synthetic fibres for bristles, and they are all intended for acrylic/watercolor work.

These are really splendid for beginners looking for a brush with a serious feel to them. I use these small rounds quite a lot of my paint-by-numbers doings, and they give me a control and precision that navigating some of those small spaces require. The Artiste Select is a moderately-priced brush with a short handle, the Snap! brushes feature a fibre called white taklon and each of these lovelies is a long-handled model ("9800 series") and I got them because I like the long handles and also I could use those for oil painting if so inclined. The bristles on all three are nice and springy and hold their shape and a fine point if needed.

Also? The prices on the Snap! brushes are all less than $10 each, most less than $5 each, which is a boon for beginning artists wanting a good quality brush for not a lot of money. 

I got mine at Artist & Craftsman Supply on SE 21st off Powell, which we have become very fond of.

So ... inexpensive but not cheap, worth it if you want to get into art without breaking the bank just yet. Hard to to better at this price point. Recommended.

A Long Look Down 122nd

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I enjoy taking long looks like this with tight, small angles on long lines of power poles and such. My Canon PowerShot is a very capable point-n-shoot, but it lacks an obvious way to take anything like a telephoto shot. So I choose angles and use the perspective I have at hand.

Sort if 'in-camera', as filmmakers might say.

NE 122nd by Rossi's has this nice long stretch of straight sidewalk going uphill, so it also offers just plain eye-catching changes in surface and angle. 

Also, there's a bus stop sign there. Which is nice.

The 73 is the 122nd Ave bus, which I got to know intimately when I was Olivia-less for a while. 

The Airway Beacon Atop Rocky Butte

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I'm not through with Rocky Butte and Joseph Wood Hill Park just yet. There's some more interesting things to point out.

There is, as I've mentioned before, and airway beacon at the top. It still works and operates most nights. I imagine it's not useful as such, however, it's as charming as all get-out and it's pretty cool to see it turn 360 at night. You can see it from NE 102nd Avenue north of Halsey, or just west of there in the Fremont and 82nd area if you look sharp. 

Of course, one can always get a good view if one goes up-close and personal.

Olivia, Hanging on a Back Street

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Another thing that's at my back when shooting the peak is trusty Olivia, the VW. Over the years, however, the City'o'Portland's idea of where you can temporarily stop while picture-taking and where you can't have assumed vaguely comic proportion; at present, there is now no parking availability on NE 122nd between Fremont and Shaver on either side of the street, and curb parking on Shaver is verboten about 200 feet either side of 122nd.

My strategem in this wise is as follows: Usually coming out of the west along Sandy from downtown Parkrose, south on NE 112th to Shaver, and west on Shaver to the point where the no-parking zone begins, right across the street from the entry to Parkrose HS. 

The walk is a little aggravating, but good for me. I need to walk more. The Brown Eyed Girl will back me up on this opinion.

It does make for a charming portrait, anyway. 

Wy'east, Blanket of Cloud

3832

There hasn't been a 'strictly-Wy'east' post here for a while and the cloud-cover today rather demanded that I rise to meet this challenge. 

The result.

The sky rather like nacre, the summit of the volcano draped in cloud, the clounds in front of that throwing dramatic shadows on the lower slopes of the peak they shaded. 

Flawless, as usual. Is it ever anything else?

The Old Rossi Place

3831

I've taken so many pictures of Wy'east from the corner of NE 122nd and Shaver and have name-checked Rossi Farms more times than I can count and even featured it in a picture or two but I've never really taken a picture that makes the main buildings the star of the show. Well, for that, this:

This is one of the houses, presumably an office of some sort, and the barn of the small, actual-working spread known as Rossi Farms (Since 1880, boasts the sign). It's adjacent to Parkrose High School,and generally speaking clings to the south side of NE Shaver Street between the Parkrose Middle School campus and part the way into the 12600 block, its 24.5 acres (approximately my estimate) riven into asymmetrical halves by the superduperblacktop of NE 122nd Avenue. 

The bigger half, that east of 122nd, is where all the growing occurs. I've seen a variety of things grown there in my going to and fro over the years. The smaller part, west of 122nd, holds the farm's offices and barn and various venues for holding events (there was at one time a small line of Western-style storefronts). Today I saw grape vines and a goat meandering amongst them.

It's always in immaculate shape. And it seems out of place now, but there was a time, about a century ago, and less than that, when the entire landscape between what was then the eastern edge of the city of Portland and whatever there was at the time of Gresham, Fairview, and Troutdale was a patchwork quilt of similar farms.

Rossi Farms. The last farm standing, and an echo of a time when Multnomah County was rife with farmers, just like the rest of the Willamette Valley. 

So it goes.

29 April 2019, At 57th And SE Division

3830

Those of you hardcore SE Portlanders will remember that, up until late 2019 or early 2020 there was one of the last classic drive-up Dairy Queen burger stands in, hell, the Universe, I guess, at the corner of SE 57th Avenue and Division Street, across from Clinton Park and Franklin High School and Atkinson Elementary. 

It was a burger stand, as in a kitchen in a building and you either parked in the lot and ate or you ate on the tables up front if the weather was nice, or you headed through the drive-through and took your haul to wherever you were going to consume it. Last year (I guess), before the pandemic, they, with little fanfare, began to pull down the ancient little building and I found out by Googling about that they had apparently decided they were going to rebuild in a more modern building, with a 2nd floor because the lot was that small.

At least that's what they said. Who can tell for certain if it's even going to happen anymore. We go by that part of Division occasionally and it's just the old parking lot with a gravel square where the building was and a big steel shipping container alongside, coated in graffiti now, holding things related to the deconstruction presumably. It keeps its own counsel in these matters.

But in April of 2019, me and the Brown Eyed Girl stopped by for a snack or perhaps a burger, and I got some photos of the park across the way, golden in that light. 

That was then. 

That Dairy Queen's burger game was immaculate, my friends. Several minutes down the road, those burgers were still hot, just the right amount of juicy, and always perfectly cooked. 

I suspect they won't be rebuilding, no matter what they meant to do. 

And so it goes. 

Painting a Busy Thing

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Painting is a thing that's happening here, as I prepare to dive back into freeform painting and paint an elephant (all in due time, Grasshopper) and I'm doing another PaintWorks work called By The Harbor. in the foreground, an overstuffed antique store on a pier, its charming contents spilling out; beyond, the aforementioned harbor, a schooner moving along through

There is a riot of flowers hanting over the scene. They are a busy, busy thing to paint.

In one of those touches so charmingly PaintWorks, the instructions invite you to personalize the picture if you so feel moved to do so by painting over the outlined words on the panel and painting your own words on the sign.

It still seems liberating the way a programmed activity, paint by numbers, is very subtly subverted by this manufacturer. You can go with the lines and disregard the little techniques and it's still pretty neat when it's done, or you can dance with the techniques and go outside the envelope a little and it's a creative artistic adventure. 

That's why I love this brand so much. You can have your paint-by-number your way, if you want.

Ralph The Buddha

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... starring in That Was Zen; This Is Meow.

Feel the serenity yet? I sure do!

The View From Zach's Shack, June, 2010

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If I throwback any harder I may just wind up back in 2010, who knows. A similar artifice worked for Christopher Reeve in Somewhere In Time. So, there's that.

Zach's Shack is a place on the north side of SE Hawthorne Blvd just east of SE 46th Avenue. It specializes in hot dogs and sausage dogs of many varieties, and is a funky space with retro concert posters and funky dogs named after Bob Dylan and New York and Chicago and such. The french fries are incomparable. And it was a nifty dark place to sit and watch Hawthorne Blvd go by.

This was the view out to the street in June, 2010.

Stumbling on this picture excites me because it makes me think of photo-realistic painting and I am planning on doing a painting based on this photo.

It's the way this looks like those snapshot photo-realism paintings I've seen so much of coming from that school. I like the way the SUV across Hawthorne rests on a spot roughly 1/3rd of a way up from the bottom, creating an asymmetrical composition in the classic style.

It's resolved. I'll be painting this soon. 

Moody Night Shot of the Fremont Bridge, 2007

3826

For our last throwback of the day, here's a view, lens flare through plastic optics and all, of the Fremont Bridge at night, taken on a March night in 2007.

This photo is the perfect backdrop for hard-boiled Portland-style detective tales, retro-future atmospheres, and anything that just needs a moody, after-dark, bridge-lit, fourteen-year-old patina. Contact us for details.

The Hull Of Norm Thompson

3825

Throwback for the day, year 2007, number two.

Norm Thompson. An escape from the ordinary. Sold outdoorsy stuff to upscale shoppers; kind of like an L.L. Bean, only Oregonized. Local until the times changed and it got sold to a big company which sold it to a bigger company which relocated it piece by piece to the east coast until now it's just like Henry Wienhard's and Rainier Beer and Steinfield's and Nalley's: historically Oregon brands that are just some nameplate to be sold back and forth. 

At the time the majority of the company was still here in Oregon but its landmark main store, which was for a very long time on NW Thurman between 18th and 19th Avenues, was left behind as Norm consolidated its operations out in the Tanasbourne area of Hillsboro along Aloclek Drive. 

It had been vacant at this point for some years ... remember, the wave of money and building hadn't gotten as far north as Thurman Street yet, in 2007. And when Norm Thompson left for Hillsboro, in 1995 or so, it took the veneer of the old building along with it, revealing the work that it covered.

Now, it's just ordinary. 

NW Thurman Street in 2007

3824

And now, a few throwback-images. These next three from 2007 ...

In 2007, the place I work for was based in industrial Northwest Portland ... well, it was then. I remember walking around getting a breath of Stadt luft on lunch breaks and such, wandering the edge of the rail yards when they were rail yards and not full of condo silos, and such. Of all the talk of old Portland evolving into new Portland and the Manhattanization of the city center, I must say that from my temporal viewpoint I got to watch development slowly creep that direction like rising sea levels from climate change.

I guess I should have known that the landscape was really about to change when the old tire warehouse across the street became a Montessori school. I wonder if the Dandy Warhol's clubhouse is still in the area and if it is ... congratulations to them. The lease on that thing must be astronomical by now. Courtney Taylor Taylor may have had to sell off one of his Taylors. 

Times are tough all around.

What I lay before you here is a view eastward down NW Thurman Street, looking from NW 19th Avenue. In those days, after hours, nobody went there. Then, eventually some people went there. Now everyone goes there. 

But then? This part of Thurman used to be a through-route with businesses and a tavern or two. In 2007, it was still something of a commercial interregnum.

Just ahead on the right was a place called Premier Gear Works, a commercial machine shop. I understand it's removed to Tualatin or somesuch, maybe Clackamas, I dunno. And it was so deserted that I could stand in the middle of this street pretty much as long as I wanted and compose to my heart's content on that old ViviCam 3705 (3.3 Mpx!) and not be in any danger from any traffic whatsoever. Up and above all this are the ramps tying I-405 and US 30 to the Fremont Bridge.

A thing that was already a relic at that time is just out of shot on the left. And that's something I will exhibit in the next entry.

The Stripes Come To 122nd

3823

And here's what I saw this morning on my way home from graveyard shift, on NE 122nd between Halsey and Holladay:

Pretty good advice, this. Virtually nobody will follow it, but it's good advice. 

Wy'east And Rocky Butte Lamp Post

3822

... and, of course, where there's Zehnkatzen Blog Post there is eventually Yet Another Photo of Wy'east. This should surprise nobody by now as the mountain is the totemic image to me as it is to George Orr, only his dreams changed everything and mine change very little. 

The composition pretty much suggested itself. I don't think I need explain it any more than that.

There is a thing to point out though. See that little cloud cap on the summit, there? That started forming in earnest at that time ad, while it didn't go into a full lenticular cap, it did persist for the rest of that day, and was pretty amazing. 

Looking Down SW 4th Avenue, ca 2009

3821

I've been looking for this one for a little while, and this is essentially a bit more of the throwback action I've also been doing latterly.

In 2009, the city wasn't being changed as swiftly as it its now; I suppose if I took this photo again today there may be obvious changes, But, as from a pleasant memory, this is a look northward down SW 4th Avenue, downtown Portland, at about SW Mill St. The small Gothic-ish brick construction on the left there is part of Saint Mary's Academy, and the centerpieces are the Portland Plaza condo tower, center left, and the Wells Fargo Tower, center right.

Both were a little iconoclastic for their day; The Portland Plaza (1975) for being weird before Portland liked weird (weird before weird was cool? Totally Portland, yo) and the Wells Fargo for being bland (and those people are sad and wrong and no you should not engage me on this) but these are two signature bits of Portland skyline and I love them dearly and I will fight you.

Mount Shasta, ca. 2009

3820

While travel opportunities have not afforded themselves to me as they have others, I have been a few places that were not Oregon. In this wise, I and the Brown Eyed Girl and some SCA friends went to Sacramento to attend a big heraldic doing back in 2009. And, continuing the theme of Cascade volcanoes which has insinuated this blog as of late, I give you the Cascade Range's second peak: Mount Shasta.

I think I've posted this before, years ago, but I don't feel like diving back right now.  The search itself was inspired by a remark that a fellow member of the Annex Art Society Facebook group made. 

Shasta (indigenous name in the nearly-extinct Karuk tongue of northwestern California: Úytaahkoo) is the second-tallest peak in the Cascade Range and almost the southernmost dormant peak in the arc, but for Mt. Lassen. It's summit elevation is 14.179 feet/4,322 m, making it almost 2,000 feet taller than Wy'east; its prominence which, in layman's terms is the difference between the summit elevation and that of the surrounding terrain, is 9,772 ft or 2,979 m, which makes it amongst the most prominent peaks in North America (Wy'east's prominence for comparis is 7,706 feet/2,349 m, also about a 2,000 foot difference). In volume it's the most voluminous stratovolcano in America.

Thus it's strange to me that it doesn't seem to impose, even close up, as Wy'east does from a distance. It does have some unique features in its local geography. One is the flatness of the terrain surrounding it; it's part of the Cascades but extraordinarily isolated for a mountain of its size (the nearest mountain higher than it is White Mountain Peak, about 335 miles away on the California-Nevada border). There's not much nearby for it to compete with.

The relative friendliness of the surrounding relief allows for a thing which must be fairly unique; a major cross-country highway, Interstate 5, comes to within eight or nine miles of the summit. Even on a easy, well-maintained road one comes remarkably close. With the gentle slopes of the foothills giving a largely-unimpeded view, the mountain does not seem, subjectively, as large as it must be. It seems close-up and friendly, rather a large, rather attractively-constructed hill. 

I have other pictures of driving past Shasta on I-5, but I think this is the best one. It not only shows the gentle spread of the shield-shaped peak, but a small dark shadow just right of center allows one to just see the famous satellite-parasitic peak, Shastina; the mountain itself being somewhat muted in the haze of an increasing distance, as we pulled north, headed back to Oregon from Sacramento.  

Wy'east From Columbia Blvd Traffic

3819

A few chapters ago I promised yet another Wy'east photo, and I have them from Rocky Butte, but I wanted to share this one first.

The aspect of Wy'east, seen through (and despite) a welter of traffic signals and 'phone pole wires and stopped traffic at the intersection of NE Cully Blvd and Columbia Blvd has a certain energy to it, and it tells a story of a most patient mountain. We people have the land and do with it as we will, but Wy'east ... well, Wy'east could the Dude a thing or a million about abiding. 

The peak abides.

Luuit/Mt St Helens, With Rocky Butte Lampposts

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The summit of Rocky Butte is, as I may have mentioned, Joseph Wood Hill Park. You get to the top by finding NE Rocky Butte Road off NE 92nd Avenue between Brazee and Russell Streets, or take NE Fremont St east from 82nd and follow it around the City Bible College (which was once the Hill Military Academy, the namesake of the same man who the park was named after). 

Once at the top the road goes around what appears to be a crenelation at the absolute summit: that is the centerpiece of Joseph Wood Hill Park, and where these views I've been sharing can be obtained. Now, during these pandemic seasons, the part of the loop that faces east has been closed, one presumes to prevent too many people from clustering into an ongoing superspreader event. But the park is still accessible, parking now being somewhat limited.

If you do go, mask up. 

Once within the limits of the crenelation, there is an absolute flat area with wide red-pumice paths and an old airway beacon (which is lit and rotates at night) and unparalleled views of outer eastside Portland, and a view of Wy'east only exceeded by that of the Johnsrud viewpoint near Sandy. The rock walls and seating niches are immensely charming. And the lamps on the stone pylons? Incomparable.

They even frame Luuit/Mt St Helens magnificently. 

 This is also a way you can see a lot of IKEA without actually going. Still, It's calendar-worthy.

Suspishus Fishus, SE Stark at 146th

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There's a Franz Bread thrift store we regularly shop at at 146th and SE Stark, and there is a building immediately west of that across a parking lot where quite a few retired and on-the-way-to-the-wrecking-lot big trucks get stored, and the building on that lot is a yellow building that used to have a hotel and motel furniture clearance store. It has not been that store, being vacant now, for several years but the building still wears its signs and colors and occasionally the random street artist will leave their mark, but occasionally the inspired guerrilla wall-flare insurgent with some talent and wit will stop by ... and leave their suspishions on the wall, for all to see.

 If there's a way to angle for the attention of my camera, this isn't a bad one. 

A Piece of I-84 In Rush Hour From A Distance

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Another view that makes me think of Rocky Butte as kind of like Council Crest East. Now, Mount Tabor's fine and the neighborhood around it most charming, but the open views are harder to find there.

Outer east Portland is mile upon mile of flattish, open-yet-cozy mid-20th-Century urban semi-sprawl (we corraled that before it got too out-of-hand, I guess). And, in Parkrose, a freeway runs though it.

Just a bit of Portland rush-hour there, on the left hand side of the road one can see the line up, those are commuters trying to get home to Vancouver at a guess ... I do believe those lanes merge into I-205 northbound heading over the Glenn Jackson. 

Cargo Coming In At PDX, As Seen From Rocky Butte, with bonus Luuit

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Rocky Butte, according to Wikipedia:

...is an extinct cinder cone butte in Portland, Oregon, United States. It is also part of the Boring Lava Field, a group of volcanic vents and lava flows throughout Oregon and Washington state. The volcano erupted between 285,000 and 500,000 years ago.

Its summit is 613 feet, or 187 metres, ASL: its obstinance in the face of the Missoula floods is what caused a riffle in the alluvial flow driven by those which we know of today as the Alameda Ridge that snakes its way east-northeastward through NE Portland for several miles, defining a number of neighborhoods and the course of a historic NE Portland street known for lovely views and high property values. 

It also has gorgeous views of its own. It takes in at least two major Cascade volcanoes clearly, miles of tree-covered eastern Portland between there and downtown, beautiful stretches of the great Columbia, parts of Vancouver and Camas, and Mount Tabor, if you look the right direction. Yesterday we spent an invigorating hour on the top of it, at Joseph Wood Hill Park, where there's a viewpoint with pumice paths, and over the next handful of blog posts, I'll be sharing these views.

Yes, there will be Wy'east. Just not yet.

The long view today is centered on a landing UPS cargo jet at PDX. The industrial and commercial land going north from the line formed by Sandy Blvd and Columbia Blvd are spread out at ones' feet here; and this all just so happens to be the main approach from the east to PDX itself. You're never late to spot any given plane; just early for the next one. 

In the foreground you have Government Island bisecting the Columbia and I-205 curving along one of the spans of the Glenn Jackson Bridge. Beyond the Columbia is, of course, the slopes encompassing the riverward part of outer Vancouver's Cascade Park nabe. 

Luuit/Mount St Helens should, at this point need no introduction though, at this time of year, still snow-clad, it's on fine form.

Sandy Blvd As Seen From Council Crest, May 2010

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Today's throwback gem returns us to our Council Crest crow's nest of the year 2010 to look at one of Portland's most unique eastside features: Sandy Boulevard. that magnificent diagonal road.

In its entirety it runs from SE 7th and Washington all the way out to Troutdale, the road actually carrying a SE directional from its root to where it crosses Burnside at 12th. As we all may be aware, this was an unbroken road until the Burnside-Couch one-way couplet was decreed, which closed off that first two blocks of NE Sandy, 12th to 14th, and now there's big condo silos there so there will be no going back on this, no, not ever. And, east of 99th in the Parkrose nabe it stops being that magnificent diagonal boulevard and more or less follows the line of the river about a mile north.

The diagonal part, though, is a defining Portland thing for me. No town does diagonal roads quite like Portland does.

The road, ironically, isn't absolutely straight, although it seems that way on maps. The very mild kink in it is easy to miss unless you're looking hard at it. It's obvious on the ground, but not so much from above. And that kink is actually easily observed as in the photo, when you have an acute-angle perspective on it. That bend is where you'll find the Portland nabe known as Hollywood, kind of a downtown for middle-northeast Portland.

Immediately to the right of that, the only high-rise visible in that area, is an apartment complex called Hollywood East; public housing, a 17-story tower at 44th and NE Broadway. And I doubt that it would be obvious even today from this vantage, but a lot of the buildings in Hollywood have been swapped out for other buildings, especially along the north side of Sandy between about 42nd and 47th. 

Beyond that a pale blue streak across the photo denotes the Columbia River, and beyond that? Oh, some part of eastern Vancouver, or Camas perhaps. It's all pretty much the same in that part of Clark County Washington.