Powell Park

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Next up on the grand(ish) tour we're visiting SE Portland's Powell Park along Powell Blvd between 22nd & 26th. It's your basic neighborhood park with a playground and ball fields, of the type I usually don't go out of my way to visit, though it does have an early 20th century gazebo for picnics & concerts, which I guess is a (mildly) interesting architectural feature. Longtime readers might remember I used to live nearby in the Brooklyn neighborhood back in the 90s, so this used to be one of my local neighborhood parks, but it wasn't the closest one and I didn't visit that often. To be honest, this post exists largely because I was in the area anyway, fetching drive thru from the Burgerville across the street, and I snapped a couple of photos while waiting for a traffic light without actually stopping & getting out. So with that out of the way, let's skip right ahead to our usual grab-bag of historical and news items:

• The park started appearing in the Oregonian in the mid-1920s, although the articles talk about the park like it had been there for a few years already. It was probably still fairly new because a lot of the early news items are budget and construction stuff. A June 1, 1924 story concerns the city hiring the lowest bidder to build bleachers for the park's baseball fields, which cost $1483 in 1924 dollars. That's about $21,281.38 in today's dollars (per the BLS calculator). A couple of years later (Sept. 12 1926) the city parks chief asked the council to fund a variety of construction projects. For Powell Park, the request was for "Flag pole, $100; apparatus, $5000; move handball court, $400; three fountains, $225; 20 lights, $2500". (The park doesn't have any fountains now, unless maybe drinking fountains count.) The next day, the city council considered a request for $1067.11 to build a "comfort station" in the park, which might mean the present-day gazebo.
• An August 14, 1931 item notes the park would be hosting a concert full of Sousa marches and other popular tunes that evening. Beyond the marches, the program featured various things like a Stephen Foster medley and some arranged excerpts from a comic opera, and it ended with the Star Spangled Banner, which had just been adopted as the official national anthem 5 months earlier, believe it or not. A couple of now-obscure pieces I was able to find on Youtube sound exactly like the background music for 1930s cartoons: Boccalari's "Dance of the Serpents" (not to be confused with Debra Paget's Snake Dance), and M.L. Lake's "Slidus Trombonus", which the paper describes as a "trombone comedy". No jazz, though. By 1931 all the cool kids wanted to listen to the devil's infernal jazz music, even in stodgy old Portland, so I imagine this was a wholesome families and oldtimers sort of event.
• With a few rare exceptions (like the previous news items), nearly every mention of Powell Park in the Oregonian has been in the sports section, concerning city baseball and softball leagues of all ages and skill levels. For a bit of the typical flavor, here's a July 28th 1940 sports page, in which local baseball leagues take up nearly the entire page. Local sports being a big deal back then, the top story in the Oregonian that day related to local soap box derby races, a sport that later fell into a decades-long decline until Portland hipsters revived it as a drunken ironic activity for 20-somethings. Meanwhile a smaller news story explained that the Nazis were bombing England. Additional WWII stories below the fold concerned the Axis marching into Romania and Ethiopia, and bombing Malta. So the paper's priorities might seem a tad... skewed. But then again, it's 2018 and Trump's burning everything down, and here I am writing about a marginally interesting city park, and I can't quite bring myself to do otherwise, and you're here reading this post, and I appreciate the company. It feels like it helps, somehow. The people of 1940 would not have known or used the phrase "self-care", of course, but I think I understand why they did what they did.
• In another rare non-baseball item, in August 1970 a big rally was held here as part of the People's Army Jamboree, an antiwar protest coinciding with the national American Legion Convention in Portland. This was one of several rallies around town, including one at Duniway Park, but overall the event had lower turnout than envisioned, thanks to Vortex 1, a state-sponsored hippie music festival out at McIver State Park near Estacada. The state guessed correctly that most hippies would choose a party over a protest if given the choice; meanwhile US troops stayed in Vietnam for another three years. I mean, a massive rally in Portland probably wouldn't have changed the course of the war anyway, but now we'll never know, will we?
• Here's an odd September 27th, 1977 article detailing points of interest along SE Powell out to where I-205 is now. As a harried commuter in modern 1977 Portland, it was your lot in life to be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way home to your Gresham split-level ranch. So the Oregonian offered up a list of mildly interesting semi-landmarks along the way if you were up for a little sightseeing. The article mentions the canceled Mt. Hood Freeway a couple of times; I don't know if the article was aimed at disgruntled suburbanites who weren't getting their (temporarily) speedy new freeway after all, or what. But oblique grumbling that doesn't get around to the real point is a very Portland thing. Incidentally, if the sights (including some restaurants, a nursery, and a cheap motel) didn't hold your interest as a professional commuter, the adjacent Scott's 88 Centers ad offers a Fall Value Days special on 8-track tapes starting at $1.88. Though it neglected to specify which 8-track tapes.
• A September 2002 Willamette Week item had a hearty chuckle about a planned weed potluck at the Powell Park gazebo. As it turned out, the activists behind it were merely a decade or so before their time. Sure, public consumption is still technically not legal, but it's probably just a matter of time at this point.
• The gazebo was gated off circa 2013, supposedly to thwart homeless people trying to use the (formerly) public restroom. The city, unsurprisingly, took the opportunity to require reservations to use the gazebo & charge for the privilege. The city proposed doing the same thing at Colonel Summers Park; I'm not sure whether that came to pass, but it usually does. I ran across two neighborhood blog posts grumbling about the unpopular new policy.

Keep Our Rivers Clean

The next mural on our ongoing tour is Keep Our Rivers Clean, on the Pacific Motorsports garage at SE 10th & Powell, across the street from the famous Original Hotcake House. This one isn't on most of the lists or maps of Portland murals for some reason, but I ran across it on a page at PDX Street Art and tracked it down from there. The mural was created in 2011 by a group of artists known as SubM2. The garage's Twitpic account has a bunch of photos of the mural being painted, which may or may not be available now based on how the ongoing Twitpic soap opera turns out: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] and more here.

Tête à Tête à Tête

In SE Portland's Brooklyn Park, a trio of rounded boulders sit at the top of a hill overlooking the park's baseball diamond. On closer inspection, you'll note the boulders have faces carved into them, like lazy slacker moai, and they're positioned as if watching a baseball game from the cheap seats. This is Tête à Tête à Tête, a sculpture installed in 1996, just after I moved out of the Brooklyn neighborhood. Its RACC page has this to say about it:

The solid granite stones (each weighing 2-3 tons) for Tête à Tête à Tête were hand-picked by artist Marcia Donahue in Bakersfield, CA and sculpted in her Oakland studio. The pieces were intended as an “audience” for the baseball diamond in the park and Mt. St. Helens beyond it. Meant to be touched, Donahue designed the pieces to provide an invitation to focus inwardly on the immediate surroundings as well as towards the mountain beyond. The sculptures were inspired by the stone’s natural shape and by the long human tradition of sculpting human faces in stone.

A fun thing about living in the Brooklyn neighborhood was the sense you were in a small town inside the big city, without all the downsides of being in a real small town (nosy neighbors, xenophobia, lack of shopping options, etc.) Brooklyn is surrounded by industry and railroads on three sides, and the Willamette River on the fourth. You soon realize it's a lot more convenient to shop at local businesses and go to the neighborhood park rather than trek to some other part of town. I'm just going on my own very subjective observations here, but it seems like the Brooklyn Park baseball diamond gets used more often than those in other city parks. And used for baseball or softball, not just hipster pastimes like adult kickball. The park hosts neighborhood picnics in the summer, and the hill's good for sledding when it snows. It's probably more of a beginner sledding hill, but in this city, where it only snows every few years, just about everyone counts as a beginner, I think.

The requisite tangent for today: Ran across an animated short film from Canada, also titled "Tête à Tête à Tête", about three cartoon heads sharing a body. I'm trying to embed this from the National Film Board of Canada website, which I've never had occasion to do before, so we'll see if that really works or not. If not, the link below takes you to the film on their site instead.

Tête à Tête à Tête by Marv Newland, National Film Board of Canada

SE 16th & Brooklyn

A few days ago I did a post about the City Repair street graphic at SE 15th & Alder. I mentioned something then about a possible future blog project of tracking down other painted intersections. And then, by chance, I stumbled across another one, this time at SE 16th & Brooklyn. I didn't have the ultrawide lens with me, or a quadcopter camera drone, or anything like that. But I had something just as good, or maybe better, namely the Brooklyn St. footbridge right next to the intersection. So I was able to just stand at the top of the bridge and take photos looking down. That doesn't really translate to any of the other street graphics out there, but hey, it got the job done this time.

The City Repair page about this project describes the design of colorful interlocking gears:

At the intersection of 16th & Brooklyn in SE Portland is a community-built skate park and a pedestrian bridge over the railroad. We chose this location for a number of reasons--to expand it’s potential as a community gathering place, to be more inviting to the neighborhood, and because it is where we live! Muted by past and present industry, we felt that this area could really use some more color and vitality. We want to grow out from the skate park and recharge this space, by collaborating in the creation of a street mural that captures our collective creativity and identities.

Over several months we have amassed ideas from community members and artists who we’ve met along the way, and developed the design pictured here. The center of each gear features a piece created by a participant in this collaborative process—and the gears show that, while we are each individual, we maintain connections that are integral to keeping the community churning. The points of contact between two gears set into motion contact between other gears in the collection, overall creating a movement that is sustained by the whole group. Each part is equally necessary and essential to everyone working together.

In the 15th & Alder post, I also said something about checking the Oregonian historical database for all the fascinating historical events that have occurred nearby. So I tried that for 16th & Brooklyn, and I've got absolutely nothing to pass along. But hey, I tried. On the bright side, this is a sign the houses nearby probably aren't haunted or anything. Or at least not haunted due to anything newsworthy.

The one other thing here besides the footbridge and the painted intersection is the Brooklyn St. Skate Spot, a skate park directly under the bridge. I'm not a skater myself; around age 16 I was given a skateboard because they were on sale at Costco. Which I guess was a big deal because this was shortly after the wheel was invented. Anyway, I tried it once, fell off, and decided it wasn't for me, so it went in the attic to gather dust. It may still be in my dad's attic for all I know. A practically-unused vintage 1980s skateboard might be worth something on eBay. I haven't actually checked. Anyway, long story short, there's a skate park here, if you're into that.

Brooklyn Street Bridge

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Photos of the Brooklyn St. footbridge over the Union Pacific tracks in SE Portland, north of Powell Boulevard and its older sibling at Lafayette St. This bridge only dates to October 1976, and while it looks a lot more stable than the Lafayette St. bridge, it somehow manages to be even uglier. The razor wire and the random garbage probably aren't helping. On the other hand, there's a residential neighborhood on the east side of the bridge. There's also a fairly new skate park directly under the bridge, and the intersection of Brooklyn St. and SE 16th Avenue hosts its own City Repair street graphic, which you'll see in its own post here sooner or later. So that part's ok. The west side of the bridge is strictly an industrial area & probably not part of anyone's commute, so it's not really clear to me why the city felt a bridge was needed here. But hey.

A recent comment here by Gentle Reader Max pointed out that the current bridge is supposed to be demolished for MAX construction in the near future. The construction equipment nearby seems to indicate that's going to happen fairly soon now. The MAX master plan envisions a new bridge here eventually, but no funding for it has been identified at this time, which I imagine means an extended period of time with no bridge here. So, I guess, enjoy this one while you can, if you can.

Lafayette Street Bridge

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Here's a slideshow of the sketchy Lafayette St. Bridge, which crosses over the Union Pacific Railroad's Brooklyn Yard in SE Portland. I lived in the Brooklyn neighborhood for a while back in the 90s, and I never used this bridge. I knew it existed; I even thought about using it once or twice. But it didn't go anywhere I needed to go, and it didn't exactly look bike-friendly, so I never got around to it.

In a recent post about the pedestrian bridge at Union Station, I tried to list a few other similar pedestrian bridges I was sort of aware of. I vaguely remembered this one and the one at Brooklyn St. north of Powell, so I included them. A commenter then pointed out that the Lafayette & Brooklyn St. bridges were going to be demolished soon & eventually replaced due to Milwaukie MAX construction. So I figured I ought to hurry up and take some photos before that happened.

The Lafayette St. Bridge is a bit... picturesque. It's surrounded by a somewhat gritty industrial area, not overly inviting for the casual pedestrian. The bridge is tall and narrow, with steep staircases at either end, and there's nothing remotely ADA-compliant about it. It seems to have been cobbled together from scrap wood and spare railroad parts. Without using a level or straightedge, apparently -- especially on the staircases. There's graffiti everywhere. There are even gaps and holes in the boards that make up the bridge, and you can see daylight through the gaps. This is not to say it's actually unsafe, just that it fails to inspire confidence, which is something I look for in a bridge.

As you've probably guessed by now, this is not a newly built bridge. In fact this year marks the 70th birthday of the Layfayette St. Bridge. Back in 1943, the Southern Pacific Railroad (now part of Union Pacific) convinced the city to close several railroad crossings in the Brooklyn neighborhood, at Lafayette, Pershing, and Haig streets. The city agreed, with a stipulation that the railroad had to construct a pedestrian bridge at Lafayette St. at its own expense. The bridge was partially reconstructed in 1961, replacing some wooden parts with metal. This may have been the last serious maintenance it's received. The local neighborhood association was already concerned about its state of disrepair back in 1984, nearly 30 years ago. In addition to demanding basic repairs and safety features, the neighbors lobbied for better bike accessibility at the time. They, or their descendants, are obviously still waiting for that to happen.

The Oregonian database shows several instances of people being hit by trains at the Lafayette St. crossing prior to 1943, usually with fatal results. So it's no big mystery why the bridge was built.

While researching this post, I came across a Tinzeroes post about the two SE footbridges (here & the one at Brooklyn St.), and a post at Sellwood Street about this one, both from 2006. The Sellwood Street post shows a board on the bridge labeled "DANGER - do not step". Which could mean there really was a broken board, or just that somebody with chalk was trolling people who use the bridge. I didn't see this warning when I visited, so either the board's been replaced since then, or the warning's been painted over. I also came across a mention of this bridge in a paper about pedestrian/bike bridges, including an inventory of ones in the greater Portland area. I'm not saying I'm going to take that on as a project. Most of the ones on the list look kind of uninteresting, especially the ones over freeways. But if I ever do decide to do that at some point, I now have a list to work from, which is always the key step. Oh, how do I keep stumbling into these projects?

Riverside Park expedition

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A few photos from Portland's ultra-obscure Riverside Park, on the east bank of the Willamette, just a few blocks south of the Ross Island Bridge. Usually when I call a place "obscure", it implies that it's somewhere out of the way and doesn't get a lot of visitors. That's not really true this time. Riverside Park gets plenty of visitors; they just don't realize they're visiting, is all. The park, you see, is bisected by the heavily-used Springwater Trail, which is primarily used by Portland's legions of bike commuters.

This segment of the Springwater Trail was only officially opened in 2005, although I went through here once in the early 90's, back when I lived in the Brooklyn neighborhood. "Opened", I think, means that they came in and paved it to make it commuter bike friendly, and it looks like they removed some invasive plants and put in some picnic tables in a few spots. When I was here before, the area had an abandoned, back-of-beyond feel, and there were a lot of homeless people camping in the area. I still saw a few people camping out under the McLoughlin half-viaduct uphill, but in general the city and Metro have done a thorough job of making the area safe, or at least making it feel "safe". Whatever that means.

In recent years, Metro's bought up the land immediately to the north and south of the park, probably with Greenspace bond money. I gather that the stretch of now-public land adjacent to the riverbank stretch of the Springwater trail is called "Springwater on the Willamette". Which makes it sound like an upscale restaurant, or possibly a nursing home.

In any case, Riverside Park itself was here long before there was an improved trail, and before Metro was ever involved. So it really was a remote spot at one time. And don't let the map fool you; although it sits next to McLoughlin Boulevard, you can't get here from there, as McLoughlin is maybe 40-50 feet straight up, at the top of the bluff, and there aren't any stairs. Even if there were stairs, there's no way to get across McLoughlin, and I don't think there's even a continuous sidewalk up there.

Back in December 1980 the city council approved building a pedestrian overpass over McLoughlin at Haig St., which would have created a convenient river access for residents of the Brooklyn neighborhood. The overpass was expected to cost $604,942, plus another $110,000 for a fishing pier at Riverside Park that was also never constructed. I haven't yet seen a definitive explanation for why this never happened, but the article contains a couple of clues. First, the council's main opponent of the project was Commissioner Ivancie, soon to be elected mayor. Second, the money for the park was to come from federal funds originally slated for the cancelled Mt. Hood Freeway. The eastside MAX Blue Line was also funded from this pot of money, so it's possible that the overpass was nixed due to cost overruns on MAX construction. In any case, the unbuilt overpass is the only reference I've found so far to the park in the library's Oregonian database, which stretches back to 1861. The park's generic name doesn't really help the search process, but I get the distinct feeling it's pretty much always been as obscure as it is now. Given the city's current position that Willamette River fish aren't fit for human consumption, it may be just as well that the fishing pier was never built.

These days Riverside Park is merely a small part of "Springwater on the Willamette", and not even the most interesting part. When the trail work happened, Riverside was sort of overtaken by events, and went from total obscurity directly into irrelevance. It's just that it often appears on city maps when the rest doesn't, for whatever reason. So there's this mysterious green square on the river you've never been to, and nobody you know has ever been to, and you can't find any photos of on the interwebs. So naturally I'd wondered about the place for years, because I'm like that. I went into this understanding this was a Quixotic "expedition" even by my usual standards, which is saying a lot. And I have to say the park was about what I'd expected it'd be like.

I haven't been able to discover the original idea behind the city owning the place. The generic-sounding name makes it sound like it ought to be a grand place, like "Waterfront Park", or "Central Park", but it just isn't. To the north and south of the park, there are concrete pilings in the river that seem to be the remains of some kind of dock, maybe. I don't know what was here, but it must've been long ago. Riverside Park is narrower and steeper than the surrounding area, so maybe the city got it by default, way back when, because the site seemed unbuildable. I don't know, really.

The last time I was here, mumble-mumble years ago, I thought I'd try to find this "Riverside Park" place I'd seen on the map, since it was in the neighborhood and all. That effort wasn't too successful. It wasn't at all obvious what part of the area was the park and what wasn't, since it all looked more or less the same. It's also true that the quest didn't have my full attention, as I was soon preoccupied with navigating the crappy old trail, which at the time was pretty much a solid mud bog for the whole 3 mile stretch from Sellwood to the Ross Island Bridge. Or at least that's how I remember it.

Today, thanks to the magic of the interwebs, I think I've finally located the place. There's a short stretch along the trail, a few blocks south of the Ross Island Bridge, where there's a sort of cable barrier separating the trail from a steep slope down to the river. That stretch, plus the chunk of bluff on the other side of the railroad tracks, is Riverside Park, more or less. The bit to the north with the picnic tables isn't, technically. The bit to the south with some mysterious public art also isn't, technically. Technically, PortlandMaps knows the place as 3 parcels, with tax IDs R313370, R313371, and R313372, so you can go look it up if you really care.

The area as a whole is kind of cool. Looking north, there's an unusual view of the Ross Island Bridge, with downtown behind it. Due west, there's also an intriguing view of the South Waterfront towers rising behind the trees of Ross Island. So overall it's worth checking out. Just be sure to keep your eyes and ears open for bike commuters, and try to stay out of their way if you can. Jeebus. Those guys are hardcore.

How to walk the Ross Island Bridge and not die, if you're lucky

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Fresh off my semi-exciting semi-adventures walking across the Morrison Bridge, I thought I'd take a crack at bigger game. Thus it was time to walk across the Ross Island Bridge, once again without dying at any point in the process, and also taking a few photos (the full Flickr photoset is here) and trying to have interesting impressions of the experience to share on the Interwebs. And for some reason this seemed like a really great plan.

There isn't a lot of info out on the Interwebs about walking across the Ross Island, primarily because it's a bad idea and an unattractive prospect. This bit at The Deuce of Clubs has a bunch of photos, plus a battered bust of Wagner. You know, the opera guy. So if, in the course of this post, you find yourself craving a fix of fancy 19th century Germanness and wondering why there isn't any here, you know exactly where to go. Or whatever.

I'd actually walked the bridge once before, around 15 years ago. I lived in the Brooklyn neighborhood at the time, a few blocks south of Powell. For the life of me I can't recall why I tried it. It wasn't so I could blog about it; I know that much at least. I did actually have net access way back then, but it wouldn't have occurred to me to post about such a mundane thing. No, the Internet was for serious, important stuff, like the previous week's Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. But I digress. I think I just wanted to go to Powell's or something, and it was a nice sunny day, and I thought I'd walk instead of taking the bus, or trying to find a parking place in the then-dodgy industrial neighborhood around the store, better known as today's glitzy Pearl District. What I remember of the experience was that it was hot, loud, windy, and dusty, with cars, trucks, buses, semis, cement mixers, etc., whizzing by just inches away. It wasn't fun. The return trip was by bus, if that tells you anything.

So with that in mind, I set out to do it again. I'm not sure what that says about me, really.

I'm not sure it would've occurred to me to do it if I hadn't just done a post about the Morrison Bridge. Walking across the Ross Island is not an idea that readily suggests itself. The areas around both ends of the bridge are not pedestrian-friendly, by any stretch of the imagination. Just cars. The surprising bit about this is that the bridge was built way back in 1926, and the present-day approaches to the bridge date to the 1940's. That's quite early to be planning for a car-only future, and I'd be intrigued to know why they did. On the other hand, the fact kind of cramps my style a bit, since I can't blame it on the 60s and riff (semi)amusingly about monorails and jetpacks and whatnot, like I did with the Morrison. Oh, well.

Regarding the pedestrian situation, unlike the Morrison I also can't say, well, thank goodness they're going to fix it in a month or two. ODOT worked on the bridge a few years ago, and among the improvements they added a metal guardrail to keep today's humongous SUVs and so forth from crashing through the old concrete railing. But crucially, they decided to put the guardrail just on the inside of the existing railing. Which not only fails to protect pedestrians from cars, it also makes the existing sidewalk even narrower. Contrast this with the walkway on the upper deck of the Steel Bridge, for example, which places the guardrail where it should be, between vehicles and pedestrians. There's probably some traffic-engineering reason why they did it this way -- perhaps the steel bridge style makes it more likely a vehicle will rebound into traffic, other lanes, other vehicles. And if they were basing the choice on existing conditions, not too many people would've been walking the bridge at the time, so no sense in going to extra trouble to protect pedestrians who aren't even there anyway. I guess. Or it was just cheaper to do it this way. Either way, it's a choice that probably won't be revisited for a long, long time.

The bridge is fairly photogenic, but that's all it has going for it. It's scary to walk across, and scary to drive across, and I cannot even imagine how scary it must be to ride a bike across it. The bridge ranks #7 at ThingsAboutPortlandThatSuck. It also figures in a funny rant at PSU's Daily Vanguard -- although I don't understand the Eminem and Insane Clown Posse references. (Kids these days...) Elsewhere, the short description at PortlandBridges gives some idea of the traffic weirdness and complexity surrounding the bridge. An even shorter description at Home & Abroad does mention one positive thing about the bridge: "Price: Free". So there's that, at least. There's also a photo of the Ross Island on a "Portland's Bridges" post over on JGaiser's blog.

Before we get to the practical bit, a quick word on what not to do: Do not place any faith whatsoever in walking instructions from the TriMet website. It's a recipe for disaster. Here, for example, are the walking instructions from an eastbound bus stop simply known as "Ross Island Bridge" to the westbound one at SW Kelly & Corbett, which you'll pass on your way to the bridge. Here are TriMet's official government-approved instructions, which are almost poetic in their terseness:

Walk a short distance west on SW Ross Island Brg-naito Pkwy Ramp.
Turn right on SW Water Ave.
Walk a short distance north on SW Water Ave.
Turn right on SW Woods St.
Walk a short distance east on SW Woods St.
Bear left on SW Corbett Ave.
Walk a short distance north on SW Corbett Ave.
Turn right on SW Porter St.
Walk a short distance east on SW Porter St.
Turn left on SW Ross Island Brg-kelly Ave Ramp.
Walk a short distance north on SW Ross Island Brg-kelly Ave Ramp.
Total walking is 0.23 miles.

Sounds reasonably straightforward, except that the underlined bits involve darting through traffic, and probably dying. You really, really, really don't want to do this. Ah, the danger and menace lurking in such innocuous words.

Anyway, let's get to walking. The problems with walking the bridge are threefold: The western approach to the bridge, the bridge itself, and the eastern approach to the bridge. In other words, the whole damn thing. I walked west to east this time, so we'll go that way. Before you can experience the wind, dust, noise, and grime that is the Ross Island Experience, you first have to get to the damn bridge. Let's start around SW 1st & Arthur. That's about the last point you can get to easily, and by following the normal city street grid. If you were in a car and wanted to go east, you'd follow the "Ross Island Bridge" signs -- the ramp up on to (or sorta on to) Naito for a couple of blocks heading south, then a tight curve through an underpass (sorta on Grover St., but not really), and finally a straight shot onto the bridge, albeit with traffic merging on from all directions. If you're walking, ignore the "Ross Island Bridge" signs. You can't go that way. It'd work out if there was a sidewalk on the south side of the bridge, but there isn't. There just isn't. So you basically need to go the way westbound traffic is coming from. If at any point the traffic closest to you is heading the same way you are, you're going the wrong way.

So at 1st and Arthur, you want to be on the corner with the LaGrand Industrial Supply building. Walk east, under the Naito overpass. Just past the overpass there's a corner with a ramp that lets westbound traffic from the bridge get onto Naito going north. Be careful. People who use this are going full speed coming off the bridge, and are expecting to keep going full speed for a while on Naito, and they aren't expecting you to be there. Wait for a nice big gap, and cross when it's "safe". If it's anywhere near rush hour, this may take a while.

Once you're across, you'll see the ominous north entrance to the Arthur St. Tunnel, which is a blog post in itself. Ignore it, unless you're up for an alarming side trip. Arthur becomes Kelly Avenue and makes a clean break with the city street grid, heading sorta-diagonally toward the bridge. So you head SE for a few blocks, crossing a few not-very-busy streets. Then you get to the next obstacle, the ramp where northbound traffic from Macadam merges onto Kelly. Again, watch out. Drivers aren't expecting you to be there, and the fact that you are is liable to make them surly. Once you've crossed that, eventually, you've entered the bridge interchange proper. Here you'll find the "SW Kelly & Corbett" bus stop I mentioned, the purpose of which I can't fathom. It's not exactly easy to get to, and doesn't really connect to anything. I have actually seen people waiting for a bus here, but I don't know where they came from or why. Possibly they were on a previous bus and got off here by mistake, and could only stand around and wait to be rescued by the next bus.

There's one more street to cross before the bridge, this time a curving ramp where westbound bridge traffic whips around and heads south on Hood Avenue, which eventually becomes the southbound lanes of Macadam. If it's close to rush hour at all, you can probably just give up and come back some other time, because there isn't going to be a safe gap in traffic. Note that due to the way the ramp's situated, drivers won't be able to see you very well until they're almost on top of you, and again, they won't be expecting pedestrians here. So be careful! There's no shame in deciding it's simply not worth it. I kept going, and I'm still not convinced it was worth it.

Still with me? Ok. Once you're safely across, you might notice there's a stretch of new sidewalk between the "crosswalk" and the bridge proper. I think this is due to Big Pipe construction a year or two ago. One peculiar thing about it is that the new sidewalk includes a ADA-compliant curb cut, to accomodate wheelchairs and vision-impaired pedestrians (see the yellow bit in the above photo). I realize it's required by law and everything, but getting to this spot is kind of scary even with 20/20 vision and running shoes. Putting it out there as a sort of invitation almost seems sort of cruel. The sidewalk project ended at the curb cut, so I suppose whether people could actually get across the street safely was outside the scope of the project.

In any case, you're past the last traffic barrier now, and now it's time for the bridge itself. As I mentioned earlier, it's a long, long way across the bridge, it's uncomfortably narrow, and there's no barrier between you and the traffic whizzing by a few feet away. It's pretty noisy and windy too, also due to the traffic. You'll get used to all of that eventually, but you'll probably also start feeling a bit impatient, in an "are we there yet?" sort of way. I know I did, at any rate. At least there's an unusual view, so you can stop and look at that when you need a break from all the monotony and trudging.

The bridge is quite high up, to accomodate shipping traffic on the river (which for the most part no longer exists). So you'd think there'd be a pretty picture-postcard view of downtown from here, but the land below and just to the north of the bridge is derelict brownfield land, at least for the time being. Directly across the river is a riverfront cement plant. It's Portland, but not picture-postcard Portland. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advancing the usual PDX argument that industrial land, vacant areas, warehouses, and so forth all need to be turned into condo towers for the idle rich, just because I find the existing uses visually unappealing. I'm just telling you what to expect, that's all.

One interesting(?) thing along the west riverbank is a stretch of old pilings and planks, all that's left of a long-ago wooden dock along the river. Ok, it's not much to look at, but it's a rare remnant of the era when the Willamette was a working river this far upstream. When the powers that be get around to redeveloping the vacant land between the Ross Island and Marquam bridges, I'm sure they'll tear it all out, and put in some sort of overpriced public artwork that makes ironic reference to it. I know this because it's what always happens. So take a good look, and then get back to trudging.

One thing you won't get a good look at is Ross Island itself, because it's south of the bridge, and there's no sidewalk on that side. The photo above is about the best look you'll get. Unless, I suppose, you're in an eastbound vehicle, and you're stuck in traffic.

Here are a couple photos of the detailing on the bridge railing. You can't get that good of a look at it due to the new-ish guardrail. But hey, there's not all that much else to look at on the way across, so you might as well take a peek.

This is the "summit" of the bridge. It's all downhill from here.

Looking west from the "summit". You've come a long way, baby.

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As you get closer to the east bank, you'll get a closer look at that cement plant I mentioned. I realize that the fashionable Portland thing is to insist that everything vaguely industrial is horrible and icky. But admit it: If you were ever a 3-8 year old boy, at some point this was your dream job. Or at the very least you wanted a playset just like it for Christmas.

It looks straightforward enough: Gravel arrives by barge, pushed by a bright yellow tugboat. Then something industrial happens to it, and then cement leaves in bright yellow trucks.

Eventually you'll get to the other side. No, really, you will. Seriously. At the east end of the bridge there's a dedication plaque to one Sherry Ross, a pioneer who settled on -- you guessed it -- Ross Island.

Ooh, look! Flowers!

When you get to the other side, you'll be hot, dirty, and sick and tired of trudging along six inches away from careening tractor trailers. It's time for a beer. Way past time for a beer. And since you're now on SE Powell, it turns out the first OLCC-licensed establishment you'll encounter on the east side, in fact the first structure of any kind, is the Lucky Devil strip club, recently famous (as of 2022) for the drive-thru and food delivery versions of itself during the long COVID-19 lockdown. and before that for multiple incidents of SUVs hopping the curb and smacking into the building. So while you may be off the bridge, you aren't quite out of the woods yet when it comes to vehicular peril. Continuing east the very next building, right across SE 7th, is a weed store, housed in a historic 1949 aluminum shingle warehouse (but that's a whole other blog post I haven't finished yet). So if you have out-of-town visitors who want to check off as many Portlandy tourist checkboxes as possible while they're here, you can check off two of them right here.

Or maybe three, if doing stuff they read about here (an obscure Portlandy blog you probably haven't heard of) ever becomes a big tourist thing, stuff like walking across the Ross Island Bridge. I mean, it could happen, you never know. Like, who would have ever guessed we'd become world-famous for donuts, of all things? And the best part is that you can go ahead and do it now, before it's cool. Possibly years or even decades before.