Rational Exuberance

A few photos of Rational Exuberance, a sculpture that used to sit in front of the Encore condo tower at the north end of the Pearl District (not to be confused with the swanky Encore in Las Vegas). These were taken back in June 2009, and apparently the piece has gone elsewhere now; I went back for a do-over, to take some photos of it that wouldn't have quite as much sensor grime, but I couldn't find it, which given its size probably means it wasn't there. Apparently it was always intended as a temporary installation until the city got around to working on the Fields neighborhood park, so I assume it's gone for good now, and I'm pretty sure nobody's going to pay me to use the few photos I have of it.

Anyway, the title kind of cracks me up, being a play on "irrational exuberance", the famous phrase coined by Alan Greenspan during the crazy years of the dot com bubble. It cracks me up because the Encore was among the last condo towers built in Portland before the irrationally exuberant real estate bubble burst and the economy flatlined. So, the irony, it has layers.