Their uniform

Walking back to the house, I snapped a picture of these two girls.
They are clearly wearing their unofficial high school uniform of the moment: Uggs, skinny jeans, plain white long sleeved t-shirts, long hair, worn down.

When I was in high school my unofficial uniform was: converse high tops–laced up to the second grommet from the top–baggy jeans, baggy t-shirt with funny sayings and hair either worn down or up in a scrunchie.

What was your unofficial uniform?

Davis Street Door

My walk from the Max to work takes me along Davis Street. I’ve walked the length of sidewalk between Second and Third Avenues more than 100 times and never looked to my left at just the right moment. Due to some welding that was happening on the side of the street I usually walk on, today I crossed street and I spied a doorway. “How long has that been there?” I wondered to myself.

It looked open, so I wandered in. I followed the brick path through a brick corridor…
…and ended up in a charming courtyard.
There was a handy sign to let me know that the Merchants’ Hotel was built in 1885 and not only was it a fancy hotel, it had one of the first hydraulic elevators in Portland. Between World Wars, the hotel housed a number of Japanese businesses, including the Japanese-Oregon daily newspaper. The sign does not go on to say that with the coming of World War II all of those Japanese businesses would be abandoned as the Japanese were “relocated”, but ideally you know that story.
Excited to have found a nook of history on a day that only comes around every four years, I turned around and happily continued my trek to work.

Plant grows out of building

I was on my way to the doctor when I came across this upstart plant. It had the nerve to grow out of the side of a building!

I thought perhaps it had grown from the ground up behind the metal panel between the two windows, emerging mid-building.
A closer look revealed that it hadn’t come from the ground at all, but had taken root halfway up the building.
Whenever I find something like this, it reminds me how temporary our buildings are, without a human to maintain them. Plants, water, wind and weather are much stronger than concrete, given enough time.

Morning Walk

I got in a nice walk this morning and here are a few things I found.

One of the things I’m going to do this year is build supports for my garden. Square Foot Gardening says to use electrical conduit. It is the strongest for the cheapest. He specifically recommends NOT using PVC pipe. Apparently, it’s too flimsy. Electrical conduit is what you see here, but what they did, intrigued me.
They have used a PVC pipe elbow to connect the two pieces of electrical conduit. I may just copy them. The Electrical conduit costs $1.97 for 10 foot lengths. The elbow connectors for the electrical conduit cost $4.95. I think I will try a PVC elbow first and see how it goes.
I love the blue house with the yellow door and the white trim. But you know what pulls it all together? The panel of fabric covering the window.
Lovely, isn’t it? A very nice contemporary retro touch that fits right in with the house.

Walk to Lowes

I needed to walk to Lowe’s today and because I didn’t have church this morning, decided to take a longer way to see how it connected to my usual route. What I foudnd was a bit of a surprise.

Oregon does this thing I love called “One Percent for Art.” Whenever there is a large construction project, Oregon law requires, “not less than 1% of the direct construction funds of new or remodeled state buildings with construction budgets of $100,000 or greater for the acquisition of art work which may be an integral part of the building, attached thereto, or capable of display in other State Buildings” What this means is that whenever there is a big construction project, we get pubic art. The Max lines are a great place to see art.

This is my favorite art on the Yellow Line. Due to my not-so-fabulous picture, you might not be able to see, but along this bridge between Kenton and Delta park, there are these great flaming comets. They remind me of pinballs and it is fun to see the trains shoot through the pinballs and makes the bridge look like a large public pinball machine. The artist was inspired by 50s car culture. Back in the day, the people who lived in Vanport, a housing project built during the war for shipbuilders, used to race their cars on the back roads in this area of North Portland. Eventually Portland International Raceway was located in North Portland. My normal walk to Lowe’s involves bypassing this sign and walking all the way up to that brown sign in the distance. Then I take a right and another right and voila! There is Lowe’s. Sort of. I still have to walk though a few parking lots to get there. Today I took a right at the sign and figured the road would loop about before I hooked up with Hayden Meadows Drive and Lowe’s.

I turned out to be entirely wrong and for a very rare reason: I had the street running the wrong direction in my mental map. In my mind, Schmeer Road ran East/West, or perpendicular to the freeway. By taking this route, I realized that it actually is a North/South street and runs parallel to the freeway. It was incredibly disorienting, but once I realigned my directions, I realized that this route was about 10 minutes shorter than my previous one.
Schmeer Road looks like many places located next to a freeway. Big box stores, gas stations, chain restaurants, auto parts places. It’s not pretty, but I have no neighborhood hardware store, so I have to wade through all of this to get to a big box hardware store.
Schmeer Road also has Portland Meadows, the horse racing track and also the place where my brother saw a Grateful Dead concert in the 90’s.
I love walking by the Burrito House. It puts a smile on my face because to me “Burrito House” and “Fine Mexican Food” don’t really exist in the same place. Maybe “Good Mexican Food” and “Burrito House”, but anything with “House” in its name doesn’t get to use the word “fine” in my book.
I’m not sure what this building is being used for, but it is very well taken care of. It is always a highlight of my walks when I head North.

January walk.

So lately this blog has been more “In & Inactive” than “Out & About.” This is due mainly two reasons:

  1. Lack of sleep has kept me from morning exercise so fewer pictures from there.
  2. It’s really dark all the time in the winter here.

This morning, though I walked to the Tin Shed Garden Cafe where I ate breakfast with Jan & Kelly. Here are some pictures I took along the way:

Along this stretch were some nice post-war cottages. Then this tiny little house with a huge front yard and no back yard.
This part of North/Northeast Portland is the only area I’ve found in the city with alleys. Most of them seem to be little used, and some are grown over completely with blackberry brambles.
This shared garage reminded me of houses in South Boston. One owner would update the paint job on their half of the house and the other owner wouldn’t. It was pretty common to see two-toned houses. I’ve rarely seen shared garages in this town, though.
Here’s a cute little post-war house that decided to embrace the swinging 60s with geometrical porch supports, a new door and windows. The sign at the corner of the house says “Suits Me Too”
Along one side street two woman were chatting outside a van. One asked me if I would like to buy tamales. I’d never eaten one, so I took the opportunity to ask the silly questions I’d always been too shy to ask in restaurants. Questions like, “Do you eat the wrapper?” “What’s inside them?” They were selling them six for $5.00 and so I bought some chicken ones. They were good too. I’ve got a card to call if I want more and they will deliver to me.
I like clever graffiti, but this just seems like it needs to be a little more clear. What was hot? It was hot and what?
After Jan & Kelly and I ate and solved the problems of the world we went for a stroll. It was a rare February nice day. Blue sky and warm temperatures. Days like this make winter bearable.
Of course there would be a skeleton in Warrior One on top of a ladder on top of store. Don’t you have one in your town?

November morning walk.

My week off afforded a morning walk when it was actually light out. I’m having a bit of trouble with the darkness and cold this winter. Highlights:

Long before I lived in North Portland I used to bike here a lot. I’ve always loved the small house/big lot combination that flourishes here. This is a nice example.
Oh my, what a pretty craftsman house. I love it!
Except from this direction where they have decided to add a carport-cum-drive-in. If the zoning changes, they can make a killing serving hamburgers and root beer floats. What were they thinking?
What would this hole be doing in this fence?
Ah, a hole left over from the days when the meter reader actually had to read the meter.
This fence surrounded this very box-like house. The very rectangular house takes up the whole lot and is surrounded by a tall fence. The roof is pretty flat. U-G-L-Y It don’t need no alibi… It was for sale and the flyer said, “Must see inside.” Judging from the outside, I think that was all they could say.

Halloween Graveyard.

Today, I bring you the best Halloween decorations in the neighborhood. Why the fuss over a few fake gravestones and some pumpkins? Let’s look a little closer……
Ah, The Flat Earth. It had a good life. As did disco (which seems to have some sort of nostalgic zombie thing going on)
And we often morn those family values (especially every election). I personally morn the loss of the LP, though I’m not sure where the date comes from. Nuclear Power. Is it dead? France doesn’t think so.
I guarantee you a history major lives here.
Hee hee. Happy Halloween.

Random pictures from the last two months

I’ve been carrying my camera around, but haven’t been downloading pictures as much. Here are 7 random pictures from the last two months.

Caveman run this place. Today special? Sandwich. That all.
Actually, I walked by about two hours later and the message had been fleshed out to read: today special half sandwich and soup. More intelligible, but not as funny.

What’s the story behind this van, do you think? It was parked downtown.
When Matt and I went to visit my Dad and Barb in Arizona, we saw a lot of this in front yards. This, however, is an Oregon specimen, from my neighborhood. Impressive!
On the way to the Max stop is a very button-down security firm. It’s a nondescript office building with a parking lot. Boring, boring, boring. What fun to walk by one day and see these two ladies outside. I’m not sure what the protocol is when finding chickens. They don’t have collars, so it’s hard to figure out where they came from. I’m not sure how this story ended.
This is a bad picture of the beautiful moon in September. It was so beautiful that, while stopped at a light, the guy in the car next to me (I was on my bike) beeped his horn to get my attention so he could exclaim “Look at the moon!” while pointing out his sunroof. “I know!” I said. And stopped to take a picture.
Tis the season. We don’t really have fog here like I experienced living in South Boston, or even Boise. Our fog is more like very small particles of slow-falling rain. This day, a spider had spun a web on a real estate sign and the fog just made it pop.
Heh-heh. Ah, Halloween decorations. This made me chuckle. People don’t go all out in this neighborhood with the decorations, but they do decorate. I’ve got another house I need to walk by in the daylight because it is very funny.
So ends the random pictures.