Structures – Page 15

The old Portland

I grew up in Boise, Idaho, but my grandparents and aunts lived in Portland so we visited at least twice a year. Portland was the big city, where you always locked your car in the mall parking lot, where there was a bus system that people actually used, where I routinely tried not to stare at skinheads and homeless people.

In Heavier than Heaven, Charles Cross’s biography of Kurt Cobain, he describes Portland in the late 80s and early 90s as (I’m paraphrasing here) a city, but a blue-collar city, still showing its roots in logging and shipping. And that’s what I remember of downtown Portland growing up. Sure, it had Meier and Frank and the ten stories of goods, plus a fancy restaurant to replenish your appetite during a day of shopping. But it was also full of buildings like this one, single story and dingy looking and in need of a face lift. My memories of walking around downtown Portland as a child are gray (probably because of the perpetually overcast skies) and crowded (many Portland streets are not very wide).

Those dingy buildings are disappearing so quickly. Just looking at the edges of this photo you can see the changes happening. The shiny building to the left of the Passport Photo place was a similarly dingy restaurant equipment supply store until a few years ago. And in the upper left you can see additional stories grafted onto a building on the Park Blocks that has been purposed into mixed-use condominiums. On the upper right is a huge condo complex the likes of which I will never be able to afford and I can’t even tell you what kind of buildings used to be there.

It’s a time of big changes for the blue-collar logging town. Some of them I love, some of them I don’t. I just hope that through the changes Portland says a city I’m crazy in love with.

Say goodbye to two houses and easy street parking.

My neighbor who knows what’s going on in the neighborhood told me the sad news. There’s going to be a development of mixed-use apartments like we saw with the site of the former City of Roses Motel. I don’t have specifications yet, but I’m guessing there won’t be parking, or much parking included. Given that this is one block north of our house, Matt and I can probably say goodbye to easy street parking.

And we shall soon say goodbye to three structures including this beautiful duplex, which is still in great shape. No word on if the tree will survive.

Here’s the duplex from the other side. One of the tenants, now long gone, was the first person to welcome me to the neighborhood, back in 2007.

The commercial building will also go. I had some plans to tear it down and make a big garden. 🙂 But that won’t be happening.

And this pretty little house, which my neighbor says is also really nice inside.

Which means we will also lose this lilac tree.

Again, I must be careful in my lamenting as my current duplex residence also replaced a single family house. And it didn’t include parking either. I’ve been thinking more about this issue lately because the City Club just did a study about affordable housing and the membership voted to amend the report to re-zone single family neighborhoods to increase density. And there was this very intriguing interview with Sonja Trauss of SF BARF saying yes, big projects should be built. I found myself agreeing with her logic, but also resisting because I hate to see houses that are well cared for destroyed for something big and ugly and usually hugely over-priced.

Guess which house is on the cover of the Spring Proud Ground Newsletter!

Did you guess that the Orange Door was on the front cover? Yes? You are right! And guess who took the picture? Did you guess me? Right again!

Ah, Proud Ground. Thanks to you, I can say I have photo credits. My photos show up regularly in your publications.

Downtown McMenamins Passport Page Complete!

Here we go, chipping away at another page. Matt, outside the 23rd Avenue Bottle Shop. This shop is newer than our Passports, but we still had to get the stamp. This place can meet all of your McMenamins-related alcohol needs.

Across the parking lot from the Bottle Shop is McMenamins Tavern & Pool.

Onward to Hoyt, where we found the Ram’s Head.

A quick stop at the Blue Moon.

Then a long walk to the Market Street Pub where we got our last stamp and waited for a table so we could get our burger.

Here’s our completed page. We got our Mission Theater stamp when we went to the alien abduction movie last spring.

And here’s my burger. And oyster crackers came with my clam chowder!

I noticed that the lamp wasn’t going anywhere. It’s screwed to the tabletop.

A walk on Burnside to Pacific Crest Community School

Since I helped with PKO’s senior dissertation, I was invited to her Senior Dessert event, where each student talked about their senior project. Since PKO’s school is just off Burnside, I decided to talk a walk up Burnside.

But first! Dinner! According to the Oregonian, it’s Dumpling Week. I initially dismissed Dumpling Week as I am not a fan of dumplings. But that was before a friend posted the featured dumplings at Sizzle Pie. Pizza “dumplings”? I can go for that. They were delicious. Apparently Salt and Straw, the ice cream place, had some ice cream “dumplings” too.

Outside of Sizzle Pie were these signs.

They seemed to be part of an art instillation that was ending tonight.

It turned out that all those signs were encouraging people to exchange high fives! Alas, there was no one to high five with. I wonder if I missed a sign like this on the other end of the block?

The Burnside Bridge. I’ve always liked the bridge operator towers. Ahead on the left you can see the new big building that changed their window ratio after the design was approved. Nothing bad is happening to them for doing that.

This building has long been a favorite. It has a Burnside Bridge entrance and for many years was empty or used for storage. Now it seems to be some sort of creative-type work space. And also the warehouse for the fruit place, but I think that was always the case.

Blurry shot of what was the used car lot with the multi-pointed roof. I don’t know what they are building, but I can guess it’s apartments/condos that I won’t be able to afford.

Back before Matt and I shacked up, and I used to walk from my studio apartment downtown to his place in Buckman, I used to avoid this sketchy motel. But it became the Jupiter Motel, a hip place to stay. And then it was fun to walk by. In my mind, this was the first thing that really changed on Burnside.

Hippo Hardware is still there.

What was once the big parking lot for the Foursquare church is now a big apartment complex of one- and two-bedroom apartments. Starting rent for a 575 square foot one bedroom? $1395.

Here’s where the restaurant Old Wives’ Tales was before it was sold to a developer to build either apartments or condominiums. I’m not terribly upset. The owner seems quite happy with the deal (see link) and the food there was always kind of bland.

Good old Little Baja! I can remember that from when we would visit when I was growing up.

This used to be a parking lot. Now it’s…guess what! Did you guess expensive apartments? You are correct!

But here is my favorite place on East Burnside. The neon is looking quite resplendent.

This corner once held a two-story run of different modest businesses, with apartments on top. Now it’s a four-story run of fancier businesses and condos or apartments I can’t afford.

I made it to the Senior Dessert. Here’s PKO talking about her project!

My new walk to work

My new job has me back downtown. I’m very excited to take my favorite Max train. With this job, I’ve decided to get off at the Rose Quarter and walk over the Steel Bridge to get to work. This will give me a 20-minute walk at the beginning and end of my workday.

Snow Day!

The surprise snow, brought a not-so-suprise snow day. (We don’t do snow in Portland, and we certainly don’t do ice on top of snow.)

Ice and snow on the front porch.

My street was looking okay, but the side streets were icier.

Melting ice and snow in on my doormat.

We started the next day with a 2-hour delay, which was converted to a second snow day by 7:30am. Two snow days! What a gift!

Surprise Snow!

Here’s what you usually get when you go to isitsnowinginpdx.com. Because there’s often a lot of weather related anticipation/hand-wringing about the possibility of snow. And most of it comes to naught. I find the weather hype annoying.

But today I woke up at 4:30, read in bed, fed the cats, returned to bed and drifted off again after 7. When I woke up around 8:30, there was…snow? It’s been so long that snow has arrived without days of anticipation that I almost didn’t believe I was looking at actual snow. But snow it was. I stayed in bed and took in the view.

Antares kept track of the snow out the window.

So I’m going to ask you one more time. Is it snowing in Portland?

Hanging around downtown

The holiday tree (which I believe is it’s official name) is getting its branches attached. I think they supplement with branches from other trees, judging by Douglas Firs I’ve seen in the wild. (aka the neighborhoods of Portland)

Somewhere on this post is a picture of a big hole. After a period of recession-era shutdown, that big hole has now become a very sparkly new building.

Said sparkly new building towers over Director Park (picture it on the far right of the picture below). Perhaps its height will make the covered area in the park look a better scale. By the way, the roof of the covered area is being repaired as its instillation was faulty.

Our iconic “Allow Me” statue has been outfitted for the holidays.

Wordstock 2015

Wordstock is Portland’s festival of books and Portland, being a very book-friendly city, loves Wordstock. It’s been on hiatus for two or so years because it wasn’t really making enough money, but it’s back, sponsored by Literary Arts and hosted at the Portland Art Museum. Previously it was at the Convention Center. Wordstock has been listed in my calendar since they announced the date in the spring. I was very much looking forward to the festival. Sadly, my excitement was not enough to carry me through the many problems I encountered.

Tickets were $15.00 and I bought mine in September. Following the instructions in an email I recieved, I arrived at the venue more than an hour early. I found the line to check in stretched around the block. This was the pre-sale line. Wanting to skip that line, I decided to purchase another ticket inside, where the line was five people long.

I had some time to kill, so after planning my day, I decided to find all the venues so I could move quickly from one to the other. The map in my Wordstock guide was not very clear and I ended up wandering through a modern art gallery until I hit a dead end. On the way I saw a sign that indicated that this would be a pop-up thing at some point in the day. What were these pop-up things?

The pop-up events were not listed in my schedule. There was just one poster listing the many pop-up events. Both times I went by, this is how many people were crowded around it.

I waited in line for my first event, then was told where I was waiting was not the line and moved myself into the actual line. This was a good panel, where David Leviathan appeared to be texting during the panel, but was actually purchasing his book via phone, because he was going to grab one from the sales floor, but couldn’t actually get to the sales floor. This is when alarm bells should have started going off.

Exiting my first session, I joined the line to get into the next session. It had started to rain (and it was a cold, hard rain) and there were too many people trying to get in and out of the same doors. Several people cut in line, saying “I’m not buying tickets” and then ignoring us when we said we weren’t buying tickets either. Nothing was done about any line cutters.

I eventually made it inside to the inside line for Wendell Pierce, but when the presentation started, I was still standing outside.

Because I only needed one seat (the plus of attending on my own) I eventually got a seat in the actual venue.

Though they had crowd control in the venue itself there were people pressed into all of these bays listening.

This guy had apparently been out with Mr. Pierce drinking the night before. He took several poor quality photos with his phone. I wished I could have given him my camera so he could have had some good ones.

My next session was in the same building, so I figured that I would be able to make it. I again encountered a very long line. I again encountered line cutters. I was told that I probably wasn’t going to make it into the venue. Frustrated, I took a break at this desk, thinking maybe I would go upstairs for a while to see what the book market looked like. But the line to go upstairs was just as crowded as the line to go into the room I wasn’t going to get into. I was frustrated and angry and I came to the conclusion that I could be this frustrated and angry for the rest of the day, or I could go home.

I chose going home. On my way to the Max stop, I caught this picture of the line for another venue. It was 15 minutes into the presentation and the line was still a block and a half long.

Ironically, while waiting for the Max a bus went by with an ad for Wordstock.

I heard later that they sold 4000 presale tickets, plus the tickets sold day-of. All four stages together couldn’t hold 4000 people, not to mention they didn’t have crowd control for that many people. The news coverage I read was mostly laudatory and the only thing I could think was that the reporters didn’t have to wait in any lines. Perhaps next year I should go with a press pass.

I’ve rarely been so disappointed. Which I guess means I’m lucky overall, but doesn’t take away the sting of missing out on a bunch of sessions I was looking forward to.

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