Many people gasp about the ceiling, which is impressive with its zillion tons of wood.
But I most love that they put bleachers in so those who are waiting for loved ones to return can pick a spot and be assured that NO ONE WILL STAND IN FRONT OF THEM BLOCKING THEIR VIEW, something I’m quite sure I’ve complained about on this blog before.
Instead, great people watching from a great vantage point, and a clear view all around.
Thanks, PDX. I appreciate you.
After dropping Matt, Linda, and Rick off at the airport, I went to Ikea, and then I had planned to hang about Hollywood for a bit of time before my 2:30 move showtime.
I discovered that unless one is eating (or seeing a movie, but it wasn’t yet time for my movie) there’s not a ton to do on a Sunday in Hollywood. The Rite-Aid closed and turned into a Planet Fitness and the antique mall is closed on Sundays, Ray’s Ragtime isn’t where it once was, and the clothing store I thought I would check out had gone out of business and were moving their naked mannikins into a U-Haul.
I ended up wandering slowly through Trader Joes and then took a tiny street behind the Hollywood Theatre that I hadn’t walked down before.
And what did I find? Lockbuster? What might this be?
In the tiny storefront was a huge display of VHS tapes. When I got closer, I saw that the labels were top-notch. Who wouldn’t want a “vaguely British/Hitchcock” category.
Or a “holy pursuits” category that included both Excalibur and Monty Python’s the Holy Grail.
This label elicited a bark of laughter:
And I also enjoyed the “movies that look like this” category as that packaging was very familiar to me and I had forgotten its existence.
On a return visit to this window, a passerby informed me that this is an escape room, pulling the “Lockbuster” name into focus.
Matt had the idea to go to Peacock Lane for our date this week, and I thought that was a great plan. I hadn’t been since I was in the single digits.
Peacock Lane is a few blocks of houses in southeast Portland where every house decorates big. This has been going on since the 1920s.
Here are some pictures from our walk.
For shear tons-of-stuff delight, this display of many unicorns was my favorite house. Some houses have elaborate themes (as you will see); but I liked this unicorn-centered house. Unicorns don’t even have anything to do with Christmas, but they were magical all the same.
Matt and I in front of the unicorns.
People live in these houses as we were reminded by this pair who were clearly standing at the door on business. I wonder how it is to try and drive in and out during the two weeks with the lights. There is a lot of car traffic (though it’s slow) and a ton of pedestrians. Do people just stay in? Park their cars on other streets?
Anyway, that was the Harry Potter house, and here we are walking through Platform 9 and 3/4.
The Home Alone house has a lot going on. It starts with this little shadowbox.
And includes several life-size depictions of characters from the movie.
The Star Wars house is nicely minimal. I liked that there were three distinct zones: red, Darth Vadar; white, Princess Lea; and green, Yoda.
A nice sentiment at this house:
And a fun homage to ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas at this one:
The Peanuts house was fun, including Woodstock on the Zamboni.
And here’s a nice greenery and white lights display:
On the way home, we stopped at our own Kenton neighborhood display:
I like to call it “I’ll have one of everything, please!”
I’ve passed the Columbia Gorge Model Railroad club’s building many times. Every December they have a show, and every December I make a mental note to go to the show. And then I don’t. Last December, I made a task in my calendar for November to buy tickets, and voila! I am now attending the show.
The ticket taker encouraged me to do the scavenger hunt, and I’m glad she did. It was fun to find so many little details.
Here we have Union Station and a few other Portland buildings. The lights changed so the sun went down fairly regularly; here is an evening shot.
I loved that this drive-in was showing a movie.
It was also fun to watch the people operate the trains.
In this cute streetscape, a Santa rode a bicycle around the building on a loop. It’s not only the trains that move!
This coal car filler was malfunctioning, so some assist was given.
This was a fun visit, and I’m glad I finally bought the ticket.
For the first time in many years, we headed out to watch the fireworks. Specifically the Oaks Park fireworks from across the river at Willamette Park.
You can see that it was not a particularly warm night. Also, check out the very dead grass we were sitting on.
From later in the evening as the sun went down. That stand of trees to the left of Matt’s head was where the barge with the fireworks was.
This meant that we saw most of the fireworks through the leaves of those trees. This was clearly our first rodeo at Willamette Park.
A subpar fireworks picture (taken with my fireworks setting on)
People near us brought glowing balls to swing around. They were fun to watch, and photographed a tiny bit better than the fireworks.
I’m always happy to watch fireworks, even on a not-warm night with trees partially obscuring my view.
I had house-selling duties to attend to, but Matt did some protesting at Portland’s Hands Off protest.
My duties took me near the Burnside Bridge, where traffic slowed enough that I could snap this picture.
“Let’s keep an eye out for a mailbox,” I said to Matt as we set out for the airport. I had a few things to post. Imagine my surprise when I saw this quite large mail receptacle outside of the card store at PDX. Mail posted!
From there it was on through security and to our gate for our short flight to Las Vegas.
I really liked Redbox, and was sad to see it go out of business. Besides keeping people in blockbusters, they often had a good amount of independent films. And the prices were so very low.
Most kiosks have been removed but, for some reason, this one outside the Walgreens near me is still there. It’s been there long enough for some miscreants to see if there are any DVDs remaining.
I’m not sure if there were any left when they opened it up, but it’s interesting to see how many disks a kiosk could hold.
I read the movie schedule incorrectly and the first movie of my planned double feature was not playing for another week. I had already bought a ticket for the second movie in the double feature at a different theater, so I had time to kill.
I needed a place to hang out where it was warm and there was access to a bathroom. Where could I go for 2+ hours? After mulling it over, I remembered the Lloyd Center, the first shopping mall built in Oregon.
(But actually I only remembered the Lloyd Center because I checked the movie theater outside of the mall to see if I could catch an early movie at that theater. The answer: not any movie I hadn’t already seen or was interested in seeing.)
The Lloyd Center is in a state of change. All of its anchor stores have closed, and the only chain stores left are Forever 21 (it spans two floors!) and Barnes and Noble.
(Correction: The website says there is both a Hot Topic and a Claire’s; I remember seeing the Claire’s, but don’t remember the Hot Topic. The main point is that only a smattering of the retail spaces are filled with national chain stores.)
Let’s see what else there is to see.
I drove past hundreds of empty parking spaces in the street-level covered parking. When I finally found the place people were parking, it was blocked off by a chain, and I couldn’t figure out the alternate entrance. So I ended driving up a ramp (on the wrong side, as it turned out) and finding parking on the upper deck near where the Sears used to be. As I walked in, I heard much more ambient chatter than I thought I would hear.
Turns out, there was a card trading convention on the first floor! Many people were buying, selling, and chatting about cards.
Of course, to take over all this space, all the stores behind them need to be closed. And they are. One of them is the old Victoria’s Secret where I have attended a few NWCTC plays.
The medical directory lists two providers and the mall’s offices. In the early aughts, there were many professionals occupying the third story of the mall.
As the chains have fled, The Lloyd Center has offered attractive leases to small businesses. Floating World Comics is here, as is a place to buy lego.
There’s also a skate school. A school, not a rink!
Speaking of rinks, the ice rink is still going strong. It even snows intermittently. Speaking of, OPB had a fun story about one of the Zamboni drivers in December. It’s worth a listen. Or read. They have a transcript.
One thing that is an intermittent bummer about life in this particular big city is that I have no easy access to a department store. This used to be a Macy’s at the Lloyd Center, and there was another Macy’s downtown. Sometimes I just want to go to a place where I can buy a sweater and kitchen shears. And such a place is nowhere near me.
The third floor had a variety of interesting things. Beau Monde, the haircutting school I went to for many years is at the Lloyd Center now. They used to be down on SW 12th. If you want to play bridge, you can learn at the Portland Bridge Club.
Across from the Bridge Club is another club: the Chess Club. When I walked by there was a tournament, so there were many families hanging about.
The food court still has a few eating options. It also hosted some overflow chess action.
After walking the whole building, I hung out for the rest of the time at Barnes and Noble, where they had only the old edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. The new edition came out in the summer, and I hope no one buys that previous edition because it’s expensive.
I also learned that Barnes and Noble is part toy store, which makes sense because the Lloyd Center’s KB Toys closed years ago.
Overall, it was a very interesting and pleasant visit.
In late November, the TriMet Riders Club email advertised TriMet’s Ugly Christmas Sweater.
“That’s not ugly,” I thought to myself, “That’s a thing of beauty.” Soon after, I ordered.
Then, time passed. I wondered if I actually had ordered the sweater because I received no email. But then! A delivery notification saying the sweater had been shipped from Portland and would be delivered on Saturday, December 9, by 9 p.m. Wonderful! Deliveries are usually earlier than that, so it might be here in time for Heidi and Kevin’s Christmas Party.
But no. The time came to depart for the party, and no sweater was to be seen. It also hadn’t been delivered by the time we got home.
The tracking went dead for a few days, until one morning when I was told it was out for delivery! In Indianapolis, Indiana. A city that is not Portland.
Over the next week and change it would also travel to Detroit, Seattle, and then back to Portland. It arrived on Friday, December 20. I didn’t get to wear it to square dancing, work (when people were there) or out and about, but I did get to wear it to the Snow Ball Chorale and Christmas.
Here I am at the Snow Ball Chorale, Low Bar Chorale’s Winter Concert.
I posted this photo on Instagram, and someone commented, “Is that the TriMet Christmas sweater???” So clearly it was worth the wait.
The Snow Ball Chorale was also not a smooth landing. I invited people, most couldn’t go, but friend Kelly said she could go and bought a ticket. Then I let a few days go by, and when I went to get my ticket, it was sold out! I volunteered to buy Kelly’s ticket off her, because I didn’t mind going alone. Instead, she gave it to me.
Terrible organizer fail. I had a good time, though. And I liked wearing my sweater.
