On a walk to the car repair shop, I noticed this sign, which is almost completely obscured by trees and such. It’s super 1970s in style. Cool, eh? The building is now occupied by American Barricades Service.
Tag: walks
Gone from Burnside. Car lot.
When Matt lived in Southeast off of Sandy, and I lived downtown I used to walk to his house on a regular basis, mostly crossing the Burnside Bridge. Today I had to run an errand after school and it was quicker to walk back. So I noticed that the used car lot at the corner of Burnside and MLK has gone away. I wonder when that happened?
Afternoon walk on N. Mississippi
Supposedly, if this billboard is to be believed, this very skinny building will be constructed. I find it interesting because the land to the right of the supposed building is the large expanse of open space where the ghost stairs I documented in this post. Apparently this piece of land was separate from the ghost stairs land.
I’m quite glad I wasn’t sitting under this deck/porch/cover when it collapsed.
That post just snapped. I’m betting this wasn’t built to code.
Really pretty art on the side of a building.
Full picture.
Difficult to follow instructions.
I’m walking on the left-hand side of the street and the blue sign tells me to cross to the other side, because the sidewalk is closed. But the other side of the street doesn’t have any sidewalk access either. So I did what that guy is doing and walked in the road.
I’m glad they are doing work on both the red brick building on the right and the one you can see on the left. But I do need to walk on a sidewalk now and then.
Buckman Wonder Wander
Khris Soden, an artist living in the Buckman neighborhood, gave three walking tours of the neighborhood. They were called Wonder Wanders and each was about an hour long. On the Wonder Wanders we looked at details of the neighborhood, heard historical facts, and told our own stories. I was only able to attend the first one, alas, but here it is.
We started our wander at Crema. Emily, the woman with the dog in the above photo, talked about how the building’s construction made use of inexpensive materials like cinder blocks.
The builder also installed art on the exterior of the building.
Emily lives in an apartment above Crema, so she took us to her apartment.
It’s a loft-type studio with a lot of light due to the garage-door-as-window in the unit.
The builder purposely left each unit very sparse in design because he wanted the tenants to add their own touches. Emily makes bicycle bags in her apartment.
We then walked across the street to get a better vantage point for Emily’s neighbor Thom Ross, who is a woodworker. He and two other people bought this building to use as work space. Thom still has a work space, but he also has built a house in his portion of the building. You can see how it has risen up out of the one-story building.
This is Thom, and Khris.
Thom let us go into his house. The entry door preserves the exterior of the building.
There’s a small growing space that Thom is still working on.
Before you enter the house proper, you can look up and see the house rising out of the building.
This is the first floor which has the kitchen, dining room and a breakfast nook. Also, a really nice garden.
The kitchen, which Thom has designed so it can be shut off from the rest of the house so the smells don’t permeate all levels of the living space.
A view into the kitchen from the dining room. I’m guessing he made that bread as he mentioned he likes to cook.
The incredible garden with plant wall.
And eco roof. Thom said the wall was hard to figure out how to get the right ratio of water. There were a lot of dead plants and getting out the ladder before he figured out that the plants needed to be saturated with water regularly.
A look through the dining room at the staircase.
You can see where the picture can be lowered, cutting off the kitchen from the rest of the house. You can also peek into the second floor.
Orchid in window.
Thom said it was important to have the eco roof because the upper floors look right on onto the roof. At this point Thom asked us if we wanted to see the other levels. Did we ever!
This is the living room on the second floor. Thom said that it turned out to be a summer and winter living room. This is the summer living room.
And here’s the view of the eco roof.
Bar area.
Winter living room.
Stairs. This house has a lot of stairs. It also has an elevator.
The third level has the bedroom, bathroom, an office and a deck onto the other eco roof.
Thom located the trees on the building’s structural beams, because they can take the weight of the heavier planters. He also planted the roof so there is color year round.
More roof views. Thom has installed gardening boxes so he can grow vegetables.
We are now on the fourth floor. This is a flexible space good for guests to stay or to use for projects. There’s a full bathroom on this level too.
The view from the fourth floor.
Nice contrast between the eco roof and the regular roof next door.
And we’ve made it to the fifth story, where the cats love to hang out on the deck.
More view (and big picture)
Peeking over into downtown. We think this hole will become a four-story apartment complex.
The fifth floor sitting room.
And exercise area.
Peeking over Ankeny Street.
This tree is visible in the first picture from the street.
More street views.
Then we took the stairs around (and around and around and around) until we came to the street level and Thom’s sign on his door. From there, we commenced wandering.
Incoming apartments/condos.
A lot of detail on this porch.
Wandering by Central Catholic and learning the nickname of their playing field.
A peek at the Central Catholic playing field, nicknamed the Boneyard, because there was a cemetery on this plot. The graves were moved to Mt. Calvary Cemetery.
Khris tells us his own story about the Central Catholic sign.
Learning about the Ghost Bikes.
Here is Nick Bucher’s information on the Ghost Bikes site.
Ghost bikes are often decorated.
We walked by Lone Fir, and I noted it has a very fancy new sign.
I took a picture of this for future note.
Khris tells us about the Dawg Terrace, which is a renovated apartment building designed for dog owners.
It includes fire hydrants in the yard.
And these great bike parking spaces.
Khris explained how Portland once had a goodly number of gullies, which were evened out by sluicing out the roads. Here he is pointing out that the original level was at the top of this wall (the ground was even with the graves in Lone Fir Cemetery) and the road was dug out and used to fill a gully down the road.
Trolly tracks.
Another view of the cut down street.
Brightly colored house.
Mural of Africa on the garage door.
The signature.
Learning about the grisly box of human remains discovered in the 1960s on the former trash heap that was on this lot. The house from that time period has been replaced, but the killer is still alive and living in the Oregon State Penitentiary.
Learning about how the many jogs in the road came about. It seems that when there is no central planning agency, as was the case in Portland until the 1920s, developers can make their own decisions.
Nice detail on this door.
Our last stop was a Food Cart Pod next to Crema.
Thus ended the Buckman Wonder Wander that I attended. Thanks Khris, for the great tour.
Walk to work. The sunrise edition.
It has become apparent that if I can keep up these one-per-week walks to work through the school year, it will probably be dark for most of them. Let’s watch the light change as the sun rises.
This was an amazing amount of cars parked. I think there were five.
Squash growing up!
Delacata on one side, Butternut on the other. This was a most impressive parking strip garden, but apparently the owner was not at all thrilled with people helping themselves because s/he had posted a very passive aggressive sign about how much work s/he spends every week and the produce is for “MY FAMILY!!!!” Signs like that make me want to take stuff too. But I didn’t.
Pretty black-eyed susans.
Renovation! Maybe I will be able to find this house again and report on the finished product.
I love how they just cut it off.
Kitten! Cat, really. But cute.
Pretty red flowers.
Poem from the Poem Booth. You can read it here.
This was a block length (at least) hop scotch grid.
I liked that they attached the slide to the porch steps.
I wanted to see how far the hopscotch went on this side of the block, but had to be getting to work.
Nice stone and hens and chicks.
Sunrise!
This is a house that hangs out on the overhang below Interstate, just at the top of the hill. I’m worried it is not long for this world, given that everything looked very overgrown and there seems to not be siding on it anymore.
Here is the parking spot.
I’m glad to see that someone is finally renovating this building as I have always loved it.
Later in the day, I found myself behind the satchel brigade.
Fort Leavenworth
My visit commences! After a smooth flight, a trip through the Kansas City airport, (which I hadn’t seen since 1995), Heather (who I haven’t seen in the flesh since 1997) picked me up and we picked up some barbecue for a taste-off. Not surprisingly, the place with the sauce in the prepackaged pouches did not win. Also not surprisingly, the sauce without so much vinegar was my favorite. Although that place didn’t have pulled pork. Anyway, yum!
We went for a walk. Here’s where Heather and her family live on Fort Leavenworth. They have one half of the building. It was pretty awesome, that house.
Most of the older houses have informative signs telling you how long they’ve been around.
Nice detail here.
There was a lot of brick, which I was a fan of. And a lot of good detail, like on this porch.
And a lot of zoom things like this bird’s nest, which can be seen in the above photo at the top of the right-hand column.
The original wall of the fort, with rifle slot for defense.
It curved, that original wall.
We saw a fox!
My zoom was a little shaky, but there he is.
There are a lot of historical markers. I also like this photo, because both Heather (on the right) and myself (in shadow) are in it.
Patrick and E.
The mighty Missouri.
Back side of the chapel, which I liked because there are three kinds of building material used on this end: stone, cinder block and wood.
More good detail.
And this.
There were a lot of flags, not just US flags, but from all over.
Big houses.
This is the commander’s house. Faaaannnncccy!
These cannons have never been fired.
Nice clock tower with this building.
For some reason, the thickness of this drainage grate fascinated me.
This is the “beehive”. More on that in a later post.
Good window detail.
This is Heather’s porch.
Flag and tree.
Just tree.
Digital cameras are a good way to entertain a youngster. I would take the picture and the show her the image.
What’s happening on and around Belmont Street.
I had cause to take a walk up Belmont Street and took a few pictures.
Check out the date on this sign. It has been hanging in this window since before we moved into our house!
I want them to solve this crime. This poor guy, (friendly to all as far as anyone can tell) was walking along a bike path in Ashland when he was decapitated. Yipes!
These two signs together are great:
A School for Self & Energy Awareness
Absolutely You Salon.
I love the retro sign for this convalescent center.
Can you spot the update to this house?
I’m guessing this happened in approximately 1968. I kind of like it, though.
Fancy house.
Really great church building.
Next to the really great Presbyterian Church that now also holds TaborSpace.
Ivy growing like mad over this building.
Ah. It’s a former Lodge building.
Look at that ivy go!
Around the side of the building we see one tenant. I did some other checking and I think the rest of the space has been converted to residential.
Once I saw this, I wanted to make one of my own.
They also had painted bricks to look like books.
Here’s a fun house for when I have untold millions.
And here are the new houses next door. I wonder if the above house had a massive lot they subdivided to a not-so-massive lot.
Poetry post.
With very interesting stapled metal top.
Still apartments! (After the condo conversion mania of the 2000s, that’s something.)
House for if I don’t ever hit the “untold millions” stage.
There’s some water sports and some biking going in with this car.
Yet another walk to work, this one focused on apartments and houses.
Not only does this have a stone lion out front (cue Sara and a Borah cheer) it also has a shiny address plate.
On the minus side, it’s hard to read the address. On the plus side, super cool!
I spy a tall bike.
The house next door has a fancy name plate too.
Here’s what I refer to as the Brigadoon house. It was for sale and I wanted desperately to buy it, as it meets all of my requirements (small house, large lot, maker space out back). Alas, I did not have a few spare hundred thousand dollars. Then, for months I couldn’t find it again, despite swearing it was on this street. At one point, I thought it had been torn down. Was this a house that only appeared every 100 years? (Which would make it difficult to sell, I guess.) I finally figured out that when I cross Lombard, I’m faced with turning right or left to pick up a connecting street, as they don’t match up exactly. This house can be found by going right, I went left all those months, when I should have been turning right. I’m happy to say that the new owner also seems to love the house and it may survive for me to someday purchase it.
Rare Spanish-style. In my opinion, they are covering up the best feature by letting that hedge/bush grow in front of the windows on the right.
Interesting metal object on side of house that I don’t know what it is for.
Hey look! The “watching a block” apartments are done. Here they are, taking up a full city block, where once there were houses. Here are the houses. Here is a link to all the watching a block posts. The building is called the Prescott and apartments range from a 381 square foot studio to at 1069 sq foot two bedroom. Apartments.com reports they are leasing from $1195 to $2005. Count this girl happy she owns a house with an unchanging mortgage payment. $1195 for a studio? That’s more than half my monthly take-home pay.
This dude is boarded up. Will he survive to have another tenant in him, or be replaced by a tall house (or tall apartment complex)? Also,check out the pushy bushes invading the driveway space.
Nice tiny crack between buildings.
Mossy roof.
I’ve had my eye on this white house for a long time. It has open lots on both sides. I have mentally purchased said house and both lots and have a lovely garden platted. It’s very nice, the things I’ve done in my brain.
Thursday walk to work. sneaky edition.
I love me an alley in the daylight. Here are some discarded flowers to add to that alley sense.
Blackberries looming.
Blackberries getting their close-up.
There are still a goodly amount of unpaved streets in Portland. Will that ever get fixed?
Greenery and laundry.
For a long time there were skinny houses being built everywhere. Now? Tall apartment complexes.
Across the street from the soon-to-be tall apartment complex, we find the typical mid-century apartment complex.
Squirrel feeder.
Interesting roof.
I wonder if Karen and Simone love each other? Or maybe Karen or Simone’s significant others were into a sort of one-up thing?
I’ve always wondered what’s up with this business on Interstate. Not enough to do any research, though.
I stared at this for a long time before I figured out that it was broken glass with cardboard blocking the hole. It sort of looked like the mirror surface had peeled off the window.
Because I’m a child of the 80s, my first thought upon seeing this poster was, “Corey Haim?”
Nice beetle.
I’ve noticed this punk look a lot this summer. Shaved for a mohawk, brightly colored, not in stand-up mohawk form.
