Headed to my first day of work, I noted that our poor trees at the station are getting an upgrade.
You can see the problem. They look a little wan.
Mostly, I think because people carve into them, as this blurry photo is attempting to show. But also because they have very little space around them that isn’t brick or a paver.
I’m not sure if the trees themselves will survive the work, but we shall see what comes of it.
It’s fun to see how people have changed up their Biden/Harris political signs in the wake of Biden bowing out.
This is the first one that I’ve seen reference the vice presidential pick.
Can you call it vandalism when the bill should not have been posted on the post?
Hey look! It’s an old-school post, with a picture from when I was actually out and about!
This edit made me laugh. The bill is for a dating/matchmaking/speed dating service.
I’ve lived in North Portland for 16 years and hadn’t yet attended the Portland Winter Light Festival at Portland International Raceway. 2023 was the year to check it out.
While most nights are reserved for cars driving through, they do provide at least one bike and one pedestrian night. They are always on weeknights, and always early in the season, which is one reason for my absence of this Portland Christmas (“Holiday”) tradition. I like to do my Christmasing in December, not November.
I chose a night for bikes, and biked the mile to the raceway, showed my ticket and headed off to the track.
There were a million lights, such as this Santa that was surfing the waves. Families and friends often had their bikes decorated and some were playing music as they rode. Early on, I glommed on to a couple with a fun selection of music and rode behind them for an entire loop, so that was festive.
While navigating bike situations with a lot of bikes and a lot of kids riding bikes can be fraught (I’m looking at you, Bridge Pedal) the racetrack is wide, and the fact that it was a weeknight in November made riding easy. I liked being on a bike more than driving a car. As a solo attendee, I would have had to do the driving and missed the nuances of the lights. I’m pretty sure you can’t just stop in the middle of the track on car nights like you can on bike nights.
The racetrack was big enough that we got visions of all the 12 days of Christmas. Here you can see that three of the six geese a-laying have been busy.
After my first round following the couple with fun music, I took another loop to take pictures and have another look. Then I rode home.
I’m glad to have experienced this fun tradition.
Peninsula Dog and Cat Clinic has some fun animal-centric art displayed throughout. Like this piece:
I found this not so lovely University of Oregon sticker on the back of a truck on a lovely autumn morning.
My walk today included a discovery of this fun public art project: the Bayard Box.
From the website, I see that this is the ninth edition.
Despite the usual setup where you need to put money in to open the box, this one is set to open whether or not you put in money.
It includes a QR code so you can read more about the box.
Walks are that much more fun when there are finds like this.
This is gorgeous and defiant. A really nice addition to the landscape.
I’ve written about this house before (in 2015) hoping that this creepy house might be on the tear-down list. Nine years later, it’s still here. But the overgrowth around the house has been chopped down, so perhaps things are moving in the tear-down direction?
Here’s the long view, across the Kenton Rose Garden.
Added to the list of things that didn’t make it through the pandemic: the neighborhood strip club. No more will we see very scantily clad dances sunning themselves out front.
It will be interesting to see what appears on this corner. It’s in a great spot for more housing.
