Category: Structures

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.

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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?

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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.

IMG_4725I 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. 
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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.

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

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Because I only needed one seat (the plus of attending on my own) I eventually got a seat in the actual venue.
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Though they had crowd control in the venue itself there were people pressed into all of these bays listening.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

The old neighborhood

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That “luxury” apartment tower on the left occupies the same space of my beloved first residence in Portland: the Rose Friend* Apartments.  What was a five-story (maybe six?) building of studios and one-bedroom apartments that were in good, if bland 70’s refurbishment, condition have been replaced by studio and one bedroom apartments renting for much more than I could ever afford.  Right now a 500 square foot studio is priced at $1365-1525 per month.  My 342 square foot cost $500 in 2002 and had risen to $525 when I moved out in 2005.

In the foreground is the Sovereign, which is moving all its current tenants out by the end of this year. Such tenants include a gentleman who has lived in the building since 1980 and currently pays $750/month in rent.  He’s not going to find that anywhere else downtown.  As a grocery store checker, he won’t have much room in his budget to afford other things.

I loved living downtown, but I think downtown doesn’t have room for people like me.  Not the me who rented an apartment with only a temporary job, and not the me of today with my modest salary.  It’s a shame.

*Also sometimes called Rosefriend and Rosefriends.  Even when I lived there I was never quite sure how to write my rent check.

Coming soon: Criss-Cross Crosswalk

When I was 11, my aunts took my brother and I to Hawaii.  We stayed on Molokai (wonderful beaches, big waves!) and visited Honolulu, which I was much less charmed with as I got gum on the side of my nice suede sandals and the beaches were not as clean as on Molokai.  But the cool thing that Honolulu did have was criss-cross crosswalks.  These were crosswalks where all traffic would stop and the pedestrians could cross any which way, including diagonally! This delighted my brother and I to no end.
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Guess what?  Coming soon to this very intersection in my own town will be a criss-cross crosswalk.  Although apparently the official term is  “pedestrian scramble.”  Which I think is not nearly as good of a term and someone in the paper observed “sounds like a term for what a cannibal would eat for brunch.”

Anyway, coming soon!  Very exciting!

Some observations of neighborhood houses.

Love, love, LOVE this vintage pickup truck and the strange reverse tent-trailer it’s pulling. They match!  And it looks like they’ve matched for decades!IMG_4700

I love this house, because the guy who owns it is the guy I aspire to be, keeping everything neat as a pin.  The shrubbery is trimmed just so, the grass is clipped, the driveway is shiny clean and I’d be willing to bet not a single maintenance task inside has been deferred.  Sadly, I am nowhere near this accomplished.

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I went out of town for a week and a house disappeared.   Here is what has replaced it.  Two huge houses with no yard and costing much more than I’ll ever be able to afford.  (Not that I would want a house that big.)

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Here’s the view from the back.

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And today’s “Only in Portland” sighting:

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Another marker of old Burnside soon to go.

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I’ve always loved that the Philo House Thrift Shop is here, even if I have never actually found anything to purchase at said thrift shop.  The office next door has always been something like accounting or tax preparation.  What will take the places of these Old Burnside establishments?  Waxing studio?  Pot dealers?  Yet another fancy schmantzy restaurant?  Time will tell.

City of Roses (aka The Northwood Apartments) from the back.

While the residents of that small house south of the development are probably pretty sad that four floors of people on the south side of the development can look into their back yard, their sadness might pale in comparison to the residents of these two houses, who have many windows looking upon them for all time.  (Or until either the houses or the apartment complex is torn down.)  I never saw the original City of Roses Motel, it was torn down before I moved to the neighborhood.  But I’m willing to be it was only one story, or perhaps two.  Until the build out of this new complex these houses had the sunset.  Now they’ve got some morning sun and that’s it.  IMG_4677

Incredibly small props go to the builders for including any parking at all.  Mostly they don’t.

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I wonder what the going rate for one of these parking spots is?

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I have emailed the leasing office, explaining I’ve been covering the building’s construction and would love to have a tour, but they have not replied.  So I suspect this will be it for my City of Roses posts.

My secret piece of property I don’t own

I’ve long been enchanted with this tiny piece of property. I suspect it got truncated by the construction of the Max Yellow line.  It’s been a variety of things since I moved to the neighborhood in 2007.  Mostly kind of junky things, like storage space for a failed food cart.  I’ve just looked it up on my favorite Portland Maps website and learned that the lot was bought in 1993 for $33,000 and is owned by the guy who owns the house across the street.  I also just noticed in the permits/cases section that just yesterday–yesterday being 11/6 as I write this from the future–someone filed three complaints for “people living in shed” and “ongoing garage sales.”   I’ve observed that both of these things are true.

Anyway, let’s get to my fantasy.  The property is triangular shaped, .09 acre (4,038 sq feet) and right on the Max line.  It is not a piece of property for those who like solitude or a ton of space.  Although now that I write that, I bet a developer could put at least two residences into this space.

But we are talking about my ideas.  
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I would build a small footprinted house on this space that would take up about half of the triangle in the narrow part.  It would be a well-planned two stories.  Then, on the wider part of the triangle I would landscape a fun garden, so that people walking to the Max could see things grow.  There might be levels of garden. That chain link fence would not be there.  Also, there would be parking in my little triangle.  No on-street parking for me.

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I can just see it!

Improvised window treatment

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No blind for the door in the live-work unit?  Fine, I’ll make one myself, said the renter.  (Update from the future: matching blinds have now been added to the doors of all the live-work units.)

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Here’s something I’ve not seen in my eight years of living in Kenton:  people parking on this stretch of sidewalk.  When it was an empty lot, no one needed to park there.  But now that there are multiple units with not much parking, this has morphed into prime territory.  Especially for those live-work units.