Category: Structures

Horses! In Portland!

These horses are one of the things I love about living in Portland. In 2006, Scott Wayne Indiana decided all those metal rings in the sidewalk leftover from the days before horseless carriages took over the city needed some horses tethered to them. So he and a few others began doing so. Anyone who is so inspired can join this quest to spread ponies throughout the city. The Oregonian covered the phenomenon on June 24, 2006 and the horses numbers have lessened since then but I still come upon them now and then. My favorite quote from the story:

“If you install your own, note that Upham uses wire rope and compression ferrules. It’s a technique that often gets the attention of passers-by, such as the guy who followed her after she installed a pony in front of Lauro Mediterranean Kitchen to tell her she’d left her horse behind.

“I don’t really look like the kind of person who plays with toy horses on the sidewalk,” she said, “but I thanked him and said I’d be back for it later, but if he wanted to give it some water in the meantime, that’d be fine.”
story by John Foyston.

Garden Bed

I was intrigued by these planters, which are outside the Portland Village School. I was wondering if I could do something like this for the herb bed I was planning to build out front.

Nice joining.
But this is the cool part. They seem to have been fastened with a metal rod of some sort.
The rod goes all the way to the bottom.
Very nicely done, but I concluded that they were beyond my carpenter capabilities at this point.

Hottest Day of the Year Ride, my !@#$%^

The Community Cycling Center sponsors not only the Worst Day of the Year ride in February, but also the Hottest Day of the Year ride in August. On the Worst Day of the Year ride, the temperature tends to be unseasonably pleasant, with lots of sun and not much rain. So it follows that the Hottest Day of the Year ride would be rather chilly, which it was.

I got up and put on my bike shorts and my summer tank top and wandered around the house getting things ready. In my wanderings, I quickly grew chilly and added pants and a jacket. It was freezing. I didn’t warm up until the last 20 minutes of the ride. Did I mention it was cold?

Kelly and I at the start.
At one rest stop they had sno-cones, and a slip-and-slide. I partook in a sno-cone–those are pure sugar!–and watched some crazy 12 year olds and college students slide on this slip and slide.
At the end we swerved to avoid the mist-er and partook of their ice cream sundae bar.

Notice that my jacket is still on. It was cold!

Morning walk, just a few pictures

We are at that happy, albeit brief, time of year when my morning constitutionals have enough light to capture pictures.

I’m not a fan of the things you can buy to make your trees have faces. They seem like a fun idea, but all the faces creep me out. Plus, faces on trees? Is this Oz? It’s just weird. So I’m on the fence about this guy. He’s a bit more natural, and doesn’t look like he’s molded plastic, and he does have some hair, so those are all good things. But, I don’t know, he doesn’t look very happy to be stuck in that wall forever. I’m caught between “fun and kitchy” and “weird feeling.”

This is a very nice little hothouse someone built. The windows can be propped up and it looks like it could be moved, although not easily. If I built one like that, it would take up a lot of my yard, but a smaller version would be nice. Perhaps someday.

Farging Flugtag!

I borrowed my mother’s car so we could go to John and Joan’s wedding without paying for the Flexcar. (Joan’s house isn’t accessible by public transportation) This involved a trip to my mother’s house to pick up the car. Normally this is a fairly easy trip. I get on the Max Yellow line and read until I hit the bus mall downtown at which point I transfer to the #12 and read until I reach her stop. It takes about an hour, but it’s usually a pleasant hour spent reading: either on the bus, or while waiting for the bus.

Not today. Today’s commute would put off a commuter not as hearty as I. First of all, if I chose to take the yellow line, I would have to take a detour because the Max trains were not running over the Steel Bridge, their passage to downtown. Instead, I would have to take a shuttle bus over a different bridge and wait for a connecting train. So, I avoided the whole Max/Shuttle Bus/Max/Bus rigmarole and decided to take the #6 which would take me downtown where I could grab the #12 which takes me straight out to my mom’s house.

The #6 is what I would call an “advanced” bus route. Not that it is difficult to get off and on it, or the route itself is confusing, but for people not used to the melting pot that is public transportation and a bit leery about taking it in the first place, I would direct you away from the #6. First of all, the route, after turning from Lombard, travels a long way on MLK. And many, many people who live and work near MLK need to take the bus. So the bus stops often. On days I want to be somewhere quickly it seems to stop at every possible stop.

The clientele of the #6 bus ranges from incredibly loud teenagers (who can be a bit fowl-mouthed) to middle class working people, to poor working people. Throw in a few hipsters and a couple of guys with big bags of cans and you’ve got a crowded bus. I’ve ridden the #6 morning noon and night and never have I had the seat to myself for the entire trip.

So it was this trip. I was trying to write letters and the constant stopping and starting and sheer mass of humanity had my motion sickness kicking in. Without a book to retreat to, I resigned myself to staring out the window and eavesdropping on conversations.

As we approached the Hawthorne Bridge, my spidey sense kicked in. Shouldn’t we be a lot closer to downtown by now? I consulted my notes and found that, indeed we should be crossing the bridge at this point. What was holding us up?

As we slowly made our way over the bridge I realized what the problem was. It was the Flugtag! For those uninitiated, Red Bull sponsors a Flugtag in different cities around the world. Local teams make flying objects, dress in costumes and then attempt to fly off a pier, or other high place, and land in the water. Some enterprising team flew 195 feet in Austria in the year 2000, but mostly you watch the skit the group performs and then gasp as the flying machine falls off the pier and straight into the water. I went in 2004 and it is a nice way to spend an afternoon.

My recollection of that event was that I wandered down 2 hours or so before and had a seat. People filled in spaces and we all watched the show. From the bridge, this year’s event was a different animal. The “bowl” at Tom McCall Waterfront Park was packed with people. The other side of the bridge, with the big screen TV, was packed with people. Hordes of people were walking on the bridge. Billions of bikes were locked to the bridge. Traffic was moving very, very slowly.
I learned later that 80,000 people came to watch the Flugtag. With 80,000 people in once place, no one is getting anywhere fast. The bus eventually made it over the bridge, but I had missed my #12 connection. The next one was late too. I eventually made it out to my mom’s house and found out that my brother was part of the problem. He had gone to the Flugtag with a neighbor.

ps. I titled this Farging Flugtag because I just read an article about Battlestar Galactica and their clever use of the made up word “frack” which substitutes for another f-word not used on TV, or in polite company. “Fake f-words?” I thought to myself, “Why, members of the Borah Band circa 1991 already had a good fake f-word: farg.” I mostly associate the use of “farg” to Aaron Nesbit, he of the most heavy use, but it was in common use at the time among populations seeking to avoid profanity.

What the heck year is it?

I snapped this photo–do we really “snap” photos anymore?–on the way back from the post office mostly because I could have been wearing this outfit in 1988. She’s got on leggings–with lace on the bottoms! She’s also wearing a black tunic-like shirt with a bit of a ruffle on the bottom. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail which might not have had a scrunchy in it, but it did have a large hair decoration. She’s also carrying a stripy bag and wearing flats. As I don’t think of myself as “old” it is weird to see fashions I wore in Jr. High/High School come right around again. It hasn’t been that long, people.
p.s. For those of you dying for a scrunchy, they are available. Go get them and relive your late 80s/early 90s life. You can even get one called “Horsin-a-round.”

Pike Schemes Visits

As some of you may have noticed, Sara (of Pike Schemes) and I are devoted blog followers of each other. She easily wins the prize for most comments left on my blog and I have a feeling I’m a top-three finisher for the prize of “most comments left” on her (and Shawn’s) blog. So it was thrilling to have Pike Schemes in Portland.

They were in town for a few hours, on their way to Shawn’s cousin’s wedding, but we had enough time for them to get a tour of the school I work at and to have lunch at Byways, where this picture was taken. You can see it’s obverse here.
After lunch we walked back to school and stopped at Cupcake Jones where Sara fell in love with “The Pearl” cupcake. Cupcake Jones describes “The Pearl” as a: white velvet cake filled with vanilla pastry cream, topped with vanilla bean buttercream icing and a single handmade white chocolate pearl.

After that Shawn and Sara gave me a ride home so they could see “The Orange Door” in person. Then they were off to Corvallis and a wedding. It was great to see them.

Streetscape

Some people are bird watchers, some people are people watchers, some are television watchers. I am a building watcher. As I go about my day, I check out the buildings around me. Residential, commercial, new, old, it doesn’t matter. I’m interested to see them, notice tiny details I never saw before, and see how they change.

I’m always amazed how quickly the buildings of downtown change. I’ve only lived here since 2001, but things have morphed even in seven years. As I live among them, these buildings become mine, even if I never set foot in them. I lived in downtown Portland from June 2002 to August 2005 and as I went about my commute, to work, to the store, to various buses that would take me elsewhere in the city, on bike, jogging, by myself and with others, I noticed what was going on around me with my buildings until I owned large segments of the city for example:

This is the corner of SW Madison & SW Broadway where picture was taken. It is the North street of the bus mall which is currently being reconstructed to have a Max train, cars, bicycles and buses. As mentioned before, I think this will be a disaster and liked the bus mall idea much better.

The building to the left in the above picture (in shadow) is the Ambassador apartments, where I imagine the nice old ladies have afternoon tea and where I dream of living when I am an old lady.

The building to the right is the Gus J. Solomon courthouse. Here I had a job interview in 2004 with the Classroom Law Project. I didn’t get the job because they “thought I should be a teacher” as they told me in my rejection letter. It was one of the most annoying rejection letters ever. Not only did I not get a job that I was interested in, they needed to discount my choice to not pursue teaching at that time. The Post Office moved here (again) in 2003 after the other downtown location in Pioneer Courthouse was unjustly closed so the judges could have parking spaces. I haven’t been to this location lately, but for the first year or two it was one dead branch. The lone counter employee would often be reading a book when I walked in, though she was happy to help me. I liked her hair, which was long and red and braided into a crown around her head.

Stepping forward one block, building on left are apartments. I used to live a block away from them. Sadly, my beautiful building, the Rosefriend Apartments, was torn down by the First Christian Church to make way for luxury condominiums. After the condo market went sour, they reduced the ceiling height of each floor to add a few more stories, and are currently building “luxury apartments”–one of my favorite oxymorons. The First Christian Church chose to tear down the Rosefriends and build a huge building so they could have more parking spaces. In doing so they eliminated affordable housing with high ceilings, huge kitchens and a building with history and character.

From my old apartment I could see people in these apartments when they wandered out on their balcony. This didn’t really happen that often. I don’t know if I didn’t spend too much time looking out the window, or if those little tiny balconies don’t lend themselves to hanging out on. In the ground floor of that building is the Oregon history museum gift shop. It will move around the corner soon. On the side of the apartments facing the Park Blocks there is a trompe l’il mural of the Lewis & Clark Expedition.

The building on the right is the Portland Center for the Performing Arts. (PCPA.) It’s that little sliver of orange brick that looks like it has a tower on top of it (it doesn’t–more on that, below.) Matt and I volunteered as ushers one year and saw a lot of good shows. We even ushered a show during an ice storm when the streets were encased in ice. There were a few people who made their way to the theater, but it was a pretty quiet production. Afterwards, we walked the two blocks home gingerly, careful not to slip on the ice.

Behind the PCPA is the tower that doesn’t match of the First Congregational Church. When the church was built, it was built in the Richardson Romanesque style a la the church in Boston’s Copley Square. That church is another building that became mine when I lived in Boston. The story goes that when it was finished the congregation didn’t like the darkness and heavy stone of the style and eventually built a soaring bell tower in a style they would have preferred. It doesn’t match at all, but the church has embraced it, calling themselves “The church tower church or whatever” Recently, I sat all the way in the back and heard Lois Lowry–herself a resident of Boston–speak there.

This part I didn’t get around to fleshing out. (says the 2013 me, who has just discovered this unpublished post)
Art museum, used to cut through the sculpture garden pathway on the way to church.
Shiny gray building on the left in the back is the Eliot tower. Named after 1UU minster, was the safeway and cut through the parking lot on the way to church.
Next door to Eliot Tower and unseen in this small picture is the Y where I was a member until sleep problems. Home of Nicole, fabulous yoga teacher.

Sunday Parkways.

Sunday Parkways happened only once this year. For this Sunday only, a loop of 6 miles in North Portland was closed to automobile traffic. People could walk, bike, roller blade, or somersault their way through the loop. There were bands and performances and food vendors. It was very fun.

I rode the loop soon after it opened at 8 a.m. It was a slow start, but that meant I could ride fairly quickly. They day was gray, cold and a bit rainy and there weren’t many people out. This didn’t stop these two fundraisers.
Here Batman and the Fairy Princess pour lemonade for me. Who could resist?
After completing the loop, I headed downtown for a meeting. When I came back, the sun had come out and many, many people had made their way to the loop. It was a bit crowded. Thus, slower for me.
Coming off the Failing Street Overpass.
Crossing Interstate. It was cool because people on the Parkways had the right of way.
Matt got up late and decided to go jogging. I suggested that he could run the loop. He did, in the last hour it was open. He was thrilled that he could go faster than the bicyclists on the overpasses, because they had to walk their bikes and he could run. When he got back, we compared favorite bumper stickers. His was this:
Mine was, “Inside every old person their is a young person wondering what the hell happened.”

Events like these are yet another reason I’m glad I live in Portland.