Day: August 20, 2022

Profane Graffito That Made Me Laugh

Too bad to much time has passed since I took this picture and I can’t find a geotag for it. I have no idea where this was.

Teslas remind me of the man who runs their company. I haven’t gotten around to writing my screed about Elon Musk and I don’t think he deserves enough of my time to really screed it up, so here’s a short version. Basically, he occupies the same part of my brain that Donald Trump does. I think he bloviates, he’s a terrible person who doesn’t stick to his own standards, thinks much too highly of himself, and has no actual effect on my life other than annoying me.

I also hate how both men have hoards of people who think they are amazing and will not hear otherwise. Both dudes are in the way way back of the Amazing line. I’d actually put them in the Lesser Mediocre Realm.

There once was a time when I thought about Donald Trump about once per year. I’d like to go back to that frequency of thought. There was once a point (and not really that long ago) when I asked Matt, “Is there someone named Elon Musk?” because I wasn’t entirely sure.

Anyway, this chalk on wall summed up my mood.

Goodbye to 6546 N. Maryland Avenue

It’s time to bid this house goodbye. Portland Maps tells me it was built in 1941, is just over 3,000 square feet, and has two baths. It’s a pretty little house built in that storybook style right before midcentury took over. There are great examples of this in North Portland between Ainsworth and Rosa Parks. This one is low key, but still there.

Here’s a sunny-day picture I grabbed from Google Maps

This property is being deconstructed, of course, because it’s on a large lot in an area near transit where it makes sense to build multifamily units. As we can see this lot will have two buildings (a cheat by the developer to avoid the affordable housing edict) and have 30 total units and no parking.

The section of land bordered by the Interstate Fred Meyer to the North, Rosa Parks to the South, I-5 to the west and Interstate to the east, is slowly being converted to a solid tract of multifamily units with no parking. As I’ve said before, I think this is a mistake and makes for dangerous street conditions for walking, biking, and driving.

This property also (I think) hits a new milestone for this blog. It sold in March of this year for a cool $1,000,000. It’s last sale was for $399,000 in 2010, and it was an affordable $181,560 in 2001, when I first moved to Portland.

Goodbye little house. I will miss your fairy tale charm.

Fully Loaded in the Costco Parking Lot

Among the many things I hate about going to Costco is parking. I usually park very close to the end of the parking lot. And that gives me a nice long walk and a close-up look at interesting things in the lot such as this RV that was primed for adventure.

At least one of those bikes is an ebike, and it looks like there are at least five (and maybe as many as seven?) types of boards that go in the water. That’s a lot of cash, just riding on the back of the vehicle.