Echoes

Next we've got a few photos of Echoes, the cool wavy glass art outside the new-ish Dianne apartment building in the Pearl District at NW 11th & Hoyt. A small sign next to one of the panels explains:

Transparent glass laid flat becomes opaque,
Sunlight glints over the curved and rippled surface,

Echoing streams long forgotten

2018
Ivan McLean - Anna McLean
Mark Wingfield - Karina Adams - Darrell Adams

This is another post that's been lurking in Drafts for a while, but not due to editor's block this time. I took these photos after having brunch nearby, shortly before Covid really got going, and I was a bit wobbly thanks to mimosas served by the pitcher. (Looking over my photos again, I clearly thought I was taking very artsy and abstract photos of the thing, but in retrospect that was probably just the mimosas thinking.) And so it came to pass that I neglected to either make a note of exactly where this was, or take a wider photo of the setting for context. Which was a problem, because I have sort of a rule here about posts needing a specific location, so that you -- o Gentle Reader(s) -- can go see for yourself if you like something you see here.

When I got around to starting this post, I quickly realized Google was (and still is) completely useless and it had absolutely no useful results for what I was looking for, which seems to be an increasingly common problem. Although they showed me a big pile of unrelated ads in the process, so it was still a win as far as they're concerned. That was my plan A. My Plan B would've been to go do brunch again and see if I could retrace my uneven steps and stumble across the same art again, but this time write down the address, but by that point everything was locked down for Covid and I was busy avoiding everything and everyone, and retracing seemed like a bad plan just then. My Plan C was to wander around the area on Street View instead and see if anything leaped out at me. That was a dismal failure, and to further complicate things McLean's website hasn't been updated since 2016, several years before Echoes was created. At that point I shrugged and this post sank deep down into the Drafts folder and I basically forgot about it until recently (January 2023). On a whim I checked again and realized he'd simply moved over to Instagram, and I just needed to scroll backwards until I started seeing Echoes photos and see if any of them mentioned where it was. Fortunately one of them did, so now all I need to do is make myself stop rewriting this big dumb paragraph.

0.2 (pearl district)

As seen recently in the Pearl District. Don't be fooled by signs that say "warehouse" in this part of town; the Pearl is wall-to-wall luxury condos. Would it be overly snarky and controversial if I was to call this a little unsettling?

Anyway, I don't know what the "0.2" part means.

pearl contrail

They say that composing photos with strong diagonals will communicate feelings of energy and vitality. "They" being the sort of people who say that kind of thing with a straight face. In any case, it's a dark grey friday in April, and it would be charitable to say I'm half awake, and it's time to head off to the office for an Important Meeting. So I figure a little "energy and vitality" can't hurt, even if it's complete voodoo.

rain between cobblestones

Taken recently on NW 14th near REI...

pearlhenge

Some construction photos from somewhere in the Pearl District, at the tail end of the condo bubble. I'm not sure which building this turned out to be; I haven't been paying close attention to the Pearl recently, and many of the new buildings aren't overly distinctive anyway.

It's almost a shame the bubble didn't pop earlier, leaving a forest of concrete slabs and bits in its wake. Grainy black & white photos of this scene in midwinter would've been Holga-licious.

On a related note, I ran across a fascinating video tour inside the unfinished Fontainebleau Las Vegas. Billions already spent, billions more needed and unavailable. Which in turn is oddly reminiscent of the Commie-era Palatul Parlamentului in Bucharest, Romania.

Not that I'm trying to suggest an analogy between Mayor Adams and Nicolae Ceaucescu or anything, no sirree. Although it is curious how so many people seem afraid to publicly criticize Sam for any reason. Why is that, exactly? What sort of hold does he have over people? What are they so afraid of, and -- more importantly -- should I be afraid of that too, whatever it is? Maybe I should stop talking about this now. Yeah.

an afternoon amble

I decided to take a long lunch today and wander around at random taking pictures. The snarly dude in the top photo is the base of one of the four Tikitotemonikis, sculptures by Kenny Scharf that wrap around & hide the usual utilitarian streetcar power poles. (Although you can see the pole peeking out at the bottom here.) Disguising the poles is a cool idea, because they really are quite ugly. Too bad only super-rich neighborhoods get to have goodies like this.

One of our fair city's new palm trees, installed at NW 4th & Flanders by the supergeniuses at the Portland Development Commission in their latest weird attempt to gentrify the area. Maybe they're here to make the rich Californians feel at home, I dunno. But whatever the reason, it sure is weird seeing the Big Pink building framed by a palm tree. This will probably become an increasingly common sight, what with global warming and all. (I mention this mostly to see if any Big Oil astroturfing trolls show up here wanting to argue. That ought to be a real hoot.)

They say these are a special type of palm tree that can survive in our climate. But if you look closely, a lot of the fronds are already getting a bit brown and withered-looking. So we'll see if they really do survive the winter or not.

Also, they just look damn silly.

You know how the design-snob community keeps lecturing us ignorant rubes about their precious high-concept Tanner Springs Park, and that incredibly delicate ecosystem it's supposed to have? Here's a bit of that fancy-schmancy ecosystem for your enjoyment: gobs and gobs of disgusting algae, and a few dime-store goldfish. No native fish species or anything, just a bunch of freakin' goldfish. Refresh my memory, we paid how many millions of dollars for this crap?

The Portland Mercury recently proclaimed Tanner Springs Park the city's "BEST PLACE TO CATCH FISH AT 3 AM—WITH YOUR HANDS". So that's something, I guess. Although I sure wouldn't eat anything that came out of this thing. Yeccch. If this was really such a fantastic little ecotopia, there'd be herons and raccoons here all the time gobbling up all the fish, but even they avoid the place like the plague.

Ok, ok, the park has a few spiders, too, and some lilypads (but no frogs). I also saw one dragonfly, but it was probably just visiting from somewhere else. (I actually kind of like this photo, regardless of how I feel about the park.)

It probably goes without saying that the park was completely devoid of people (other than me), even though it's right in the middle of a big city, and it was a warm summer afternoon.

Wild flowers & berries along NW Naito Pkwy, under the Broadway Bridge.

I actually came down this way with the idea of making this post a three-park trifecta: Jamison Square, Tanner Springs, and the Liberty Ship Memorial Park (more info & lots of photos here). The latter is an odd little spot by the river where the concrete bows of some 150 or so WWII Liberty ships were buried, some partially protruding from the ground. Many Liberty ships were built in Portland during WWII, and many were scrapped here after the war, so it's sort of a fitting monument. Or at least it was a fitting monument. I walked past and it looks like the park just isn't there anymore. The memorial was private property, not a city park, part of a larger chunk of land owned by the Naito family. Most of the land was just a big, weedy surface parking lot, so nobody made much of a fuss when they announced they'd be building a pair of ritzy condo towers on the spot. I certainly don't recall hearing anything about removing the Liberty ship park, but that seems to be what's happened. As far as I can tell, it just sort of disappeared quietly, with no prior announcement, and no public fuss about it. I'm about the last person to get all misty-eyed with WWII nostalgia, but this just seems wrong, somehow. I realize the park was private property, but it was a piece of local history, and now it's just gone, poof. I wonder what they did with all those concrete bow pieces? eBay, maybe?