Fully Vaccinated and I’m Headed to the Movies

I went to the Living Room Theaters to watch Together Together for my first official fully vaccinated outing. The movie theater hadn’t pieced together their premovie slideshow and there were no previews! It is still very early in the venturing out process.

There were two other couples in the theater with me.

The movie was exactly the right movie to break my estrangement from movie theaters. I’m looking forward to seeing more movies in the dark.

Three houses not long for this world, +bonus siding look-see

These pictures came out darker than I thought. Apparently I took them at the time of day when my eyes register more light than my camera.

These three houses were mostly boarded up from the inside, so I didn’t notice that they had been vacated. They are on Denver Ave., just off of Rosa Parks Way. They are the type of house I love: small house, bigger lot. North Portland had a ton of these houses when I moved here in 2007. There are fewer now. And soon there will be three fewer.

Portland Maps shows an interesting situation for these houses. Two of them are on the same lot (6541 N. Denver) and the lot seems to extend into the third house, though it has it’s own address (6525 N. Denver). The middle house is not shown as having an address, both on Portland Maps and on Google Maps. However, the information on Portland Maps shows square footage for all three houses in the 6541 N. Denver record and there’s no information on the third house in the 6525 N. Denver record, So I’m assuming all three houses are included on one lot.

The lot was last sold in 1977 for $58,500. According to an inflation calculator, that’s about $231,000 of today’s dollars. I’m unclear if that $58k price reflects that it has three houses on it. In June, this lot sold for [and here I must interject via brackets that the number I’m about to type makes me literally nauseous] $1.6 million.

Wait! It seems the $1.6m is for all three houses on the block, plus the former recycling center on the corner. Nausea has slightly abated. Only slightly. My favorite site Next Portland had this to say on 10/27/17 :

Proposed development of a split zoning site, CG and R5. four story apartment building (20 units or more) on the GC portion of the site and 2 new single family homes on the R5 portion of the site. All existing structures on site to be demoed.

By dividing $1.6m four ways, that roughly pencils out to $400,000 per lot. 

Four hundred thousand dollars for just the land. That’s before the demo. 

And that, friends, is why we have a homelessness problem in Portland.

Fun fact, I first noticed these houses had been boarded up when I saw one of our neighborhood homeless residents sleeping on the porch of the red house.

Onto the houses. This guy is 600 square feet, with a full basement.  It’s the corner lot and has a nice big backyard. 

This house is 720 square feet with a full basement. The assessment also includes 500 square feet of concrete which you see in the picture. It serves as the driveway for both houses. This is my favorite house of the three, though I think it has the smaller yard.

This house is 720 square feet with a full basement. It is right next to the former recycling center.

The records don’t say, but I’m guessing houses 2 and 3 were built by the same builder. They look very much the same. There’s a good chance house the first house was built then too. They have a lot of the same lines. 

The record on Portland Maps only lists 1922 as a build date and it doesn’t specify if that year applies to all three houses. Either way, I will miss their presence. 

Here’s a side view of where the recycling center used to be. Portland Maps says this garage (it probably was one before it was the recycling center) was built in 1950. I can’t tell if this property was owned by the same person who owned the houses, but my guess is yes. If so, that person made a tidy profit on this sale.

The recycling center (Far West Fibers) closed soon after China stopped taking plastic from the USA, citing too much contamination. It was too bad, as this was a handy place for me to drop off the plastic that couldn’t be recycled curbside. 

Bonus picture! The property at 1936 NE Alberta. It’s a bit of office/shop space in the middle of a residential neighborhood. These are always a fun find for me. They are almost never shops or offices anymore, as our shopping patterns have changed enough that they are not viable as neighborhood shops.

Today, though, I was even more excited to find this detail.

Exposed: the previous shell of the building. It looks like sometime–I’m guessing mid-twentieth century–this building was revitalized to make it more modern. The sides were built out to make the structure more box-like and the brick was added.

If it weren’t a little too dark, you could see the former slanted roof which has been covered by the more modern flat roof.

Despite its office-looking appearance, Portland Maps lists this as a single family residential building. It was bought in 1994 for $135,000 (about $236k today) and was sold in 2017 for $695,000. The owners live on site, so I’m not sure what their plan is. Live in it? Demo and rebuild? It’s a big enough lot they could. There’s nothing on Next Portland’s development map, so we shall have to see.

Either way, I’m glad I got a chance to peek at what was there before.

Where have the three sentence movie reviews gone?

Exciting news! The three sentence movie reviews I’ve been writing since 2008 (all 1000+ of them) now have their own site.

You can read already published three sentence movie reviews on this site without ads. They are also available on the new site.

Starting 10/1/18, all three sentence movie reviews can be found at:

www.threesentencemoviereviews.com

Three sentence movie reviews: A Simple Favor

http://www.impawards.com/2018/simple_favor_ver2.html

A suspense movie with comic moments, this is also 117 minutes of thinking how awesome Blake Lively looks in a suit. I felt the script pointed me in a clear direction early on; this turned out to not be the actual direction, so when things resolved themselves it took some time for me to let go of my framework and accept what the movie was telling me. Other than that, this was a crisp, succinct fabulous movie.*

Cost: $6.00
Where watched: McMenamins St. Johns Theater with Matt, who is an Anna Kendrik fan.

*This film is more evidence of my hypothesis: Paul Fieg is the best white male director for stories about women.

Three sentence movie reviews: Ocean’s Thirteen

http://www.impawards.com/2007/oceans_thirteen.html

For me, it’s the most forgettable Ocean’s movie* but that doesn’t really matter because it’s another opportunity to hang around with the crew. Though lacking in both Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ellen Barkin does some great work. And there’s that funny bit with Linus’ nose.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home, with Matt

*Unlike the other two movies, I remembered nothing about the plot.

Three sentence movie reviews: Nappily Ever After

http://www.impawards.com/tv/nappily_ever_after.html

In this movie, Sanaa Lathan is mesmerizing in all her various stages of hair, but never more so as she drunkenly shaves her head. Hair is the framework for a reinvention of a life not quite fully lived, and it’s great to see Lathan’s self discovery along the way. This is another romantic comedy that tilts more toward empowerment than happily ever after, a tilt I heartily endorse.

Cost: Netflix monthly charge ($7.99)
Where watched: at home.

Three sentence movie reviews: Beatriz at Dinner

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2017/beatriz_at_dinner.html

I enjoy a good movie that explores class, and if you throw in one that also examines “friendship” between the help and their employers, all the better. But alas, this movie didn’t give me many places latch on and really care; people were interesting (or abhorrent) but so what? It also had one of those endings that is supposed to be all art-y and deep, but really felt like they hadn’t really figured out how to end the movie.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home

Ann Hornaday’s Best Films of the 2000s. How many have I seen.?

Ann Hornaday from the Washington Post has proposed a list of the best 23 films of the 2000s. Let’s see which ones I’ve seen.

Movies I’ve seen:

  • 25th Hour
  • The Hurt Locker
  • Michael Clayton
  • Boyhood
  • 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
  • Old Joy
  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
  • You Can Count on Me
  • No Country for Old Men
  • I’m Not There
  • Dunkirk
  • Mudbound
  • Spotlight
  • Stories We Tell
  • The Royal Tenenbaums

Movies I’ve not yet seen, but plan to:

  • Children of Men
  • There Will Be Blood
  • Hunger
  • Spirited Away

Movies I most likely won’t watch:

  • Pan’s Labyrinth–this movie has weirded me out for years.
  • Minority Report–Tom Cruise is a no-go for me
  • Son of Saul–I have trouble prioritizing movies depicting the holocaust
  • The Fog of War–I’m sure this is a great documentary, but there just aren’t very many documentaries in my life.

Let’s look at what I’ve seen. Of the fifteen on the list…

I heartily recommend: 

Movies that are good movies to watch in general:
Movies that are good, but tough to watch (tense, difficult subject matter, etc.)*

*People would probably put Spotlight on this list, but it’s such a quality film, I think that overcomes the difficult subject matter.

Movies that I remember liking, but would have to watch again before recommending them:
  • 25th Hour
  • Michael Clayton
  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
  • I’m Not There (I recall being overly tired while watching, which got in the way of my enjoyment) (Yep. Tired.)

Three sentence movie reviews: Blockers

http://www.impawards.com/2018/blockers_ver2.html

Three things I loved about this movie: the way young women’s sexuality was treated with respect; the casting of actors who looked like normal teenagers; and how hilarious it was.  While much of the humor was based on exaggerated situations that would not happen in real life and some of it wasn’t my cup of tea, I laughed a lot while watching this movie. All six actors on that poster were great.*

Cost: $1.50, from Redbox
Where watched: at home

*The recent comic turns by John Cena, (Blockers, Trainwreck) Dwane Johnson, (Central Intelligence)  and Chris Hemsworth, (Ghostbusters, Thor: Ragnarok) have me thinking we could populate a hilarious comedy using only guys who can’t buy their shirts off the rack.