Sunset before an evening thunderstorm, July 3rd '06, downtown Portland.
A detail of the sculpture "The Dreamer" by Manuel Izquierdo, in Pettygrove Park. The park as a whole is remarkably peaceful, except when the Shakespeareans take over.
Mount Hood from Upper Hall St., near downtown, taken during my recent Governors Park expedition. I think I mentioned at the time that the surrounding area is far more scenic than the park itself. This is just one example. In my entirely scientific and unbiased opinion, the area around Upper Hall St. offers better views than the Rose Garden or Council Crest. It's a residential area without a lot of parking, though.
At the intersection of SW 10th and Washington, we find the mysterious word "EASTERN" embedded in the sidewalk. Apparently at one time 10th was Eastern Ave., and 11th was Western Ave., and I guess 12th must've been the edge of the flat earth. Meanwhile, Broadway used to be known as 7th, so there's not a clear trend toward or away from numbered streets.
One of the Hawthorne Bridge towers. Note the halo around the sun. I was trying to be artsy here, but I'm not artsy enough to know whether I was successful or not.
Mt. St. Helens from SW College St., in the same vicinity as where the Mt. Hood photo was taken. Note the jet, and immediately below it another "UFO" (previously seen here and in the 4th photo here). This one's so small I can't tell what it really is. At first I thought it was a bucket suspended from the plane, for fighting forest fires. But the plane looks like a regular jetliner, so that's probably not it. Who knows?
I'm not actually that fond of this picture, but it's of one of my favorite weird old buildings, downtown at SW 2nd & Taylor. I know basically nothing about it, but it looks like it's had an interesting history. Most recently the ground floor hosted at least 2 incarnations of some sort of piano bar, which I gather catered to the "Elimidate" crowd. But that's gone now, and as far as I can tell the entire building is empty. Really they ought to donate the place to me, before the luxury condo conversion folks get their grubby mitts on it.
The photo's taken from SW 3rd, across a vacant lot that used to be a notorious, sleazy porn store, which covered a full quarter of a city block. Diagonally across the intersection of 3rd & Taylor from here there used to be a notorious, sleazy porn theater, housed in a crumbling, gothically run-down 19th century building. The surrounding area has been perfectly respectable for as long as I can remember, but it used to be that you'd avoid this particular intersection unless you were a card-carrying member of the trenchcoat brigade. I was out of town for the latter half of the 90's, and while I was gone both of these places were expunged from the universe. I don't know when, or under what circumstances. Quite possibly the building inspector saw the theater and condemned the place on the spot. These days there's no sign that either ever existed, except for a couple of empty lots.
Part of the sidewalk somewhere deep in the Pearl district. You won't find Tanner Creek on any map, because the whole thing is underground these days. An early plan for the area proposed "daylighting" the creek, which would've been really cool. I suppose that would've been too expensive, or would've used up too much valuable condo tower land, so instead we have fussy conceptual art non-substitutes like this, and like Tanner Springs a few blocks "downstream". Feh.
No comments :
Post a Comment