the tram again

Whenever I end up with a new photo widget, sooner or later I end up taking photos of our fair city's shiny, goofy, condo-bubble-era aerial tram. I generally don't post the photos, since they're just test shots, and they usually all look alike, and I tend to bore my Gentle Reader(s) quite enough already without inflicting those on you.

This time is a bit different, though. It's still the same damn tram it's always been, but the lens this time is a monster-sized Questar 700mm mirror lens that I recently inherited. I'm not at a point where I'm up to talking about that part in elaborate detail, although a couple of previous posts should give a general idea of the circumstances.

"I'm Flying, John!"

Say "hi" to downtown Portland's new, more affordable aerial tram...

riding the tram with an old camera

So I rode the tram again the other day. The thing's about a year old now, and the novelty's worn off. Normally I wouldn't have bothered to ride it, much less post photos of it, but I was taking another old vintage camera for a spin, and the real point of this is to show off the results. So let's just agree we've all done the obligatory collective eye roll about the tram, and another eye roll about the whole South Waterfront thing.



The camera I used is an old Argus C3 Matchmatic, which was made between 1958 and 1966. If you've never seen one, you'll want to go look at the photo. There really isn't anything else quite like it. Two-tone leatherette and a bunch of shiny gears, and shaped almost exactly like a brick. Some people call it ugly, but I can't agree. As soon as I saw one on the antique store shelf, I went "ooh, cool" and decided I had to have it. I basically got it because it looked cool, and because it's a bit of vintage Americana. I'm no chest-thumping flag-waving patriot type, of course, but in the camera world, buying American is a form of rooting for the underdog. As is buying anything that isn't Japanese, German, or Russian, come to think of it. In addition, Arguses are cheap and plentiful, and (supposedly) relatively easy to fix if they break, and they don't break all that often. That's a desirable trait in a 40-50 year old camera.



I didn't get it thinking it would actually take decent photos. It doesn't exactly look like it would, does it? I figured I'd run a roll through it out of curiosity, and I suppose also on the principle that I'm a camera user, not a collector, and I don't buy things just to put in a display case or whatever. But surprisingly, I actually like the results. A while back I saw an interesting comment about this, to the effect that it's a rather inconvenient camera to use, so there must be some other reason Argus sold millions of them, and kept making them from 1939 all the way to 1966.



The standard lens on a C3 is the Coated Cintar, 50mm, f/3.5, which is what I've got. Not everyone realizes the C3 is an interchangeable lens camera. Despite its popularity, only a handful of lenses were ever marketed for it. Possibly this is because changing lenses is a bit of a chore. First you have to unscrew and remove the gear that couples the rangefinder to the lens. Then you unscrew the lens itself, and put the new lens on in its place. When putting the coupling gear back on, you have to take care that the rangefinder and lens are in sync, so that infinity on one means infinity on the other. Otherwise your focus will be all wrong, and you won't know it until you get your photos back. There's a short but apparently complete list of Argus lenses here, and photos of a couple of the more common ones here.



There's surprisingly little info on the net about the C3 lens mount, and I've never seen anyone selling an adapter to use Argus lenses on other cameras, despite the vast availability of cheap Arguses with perfectly decent lenses. So here's what I've been able to figure out. The screw thread is quite narrow -- I measured it at 34-35mm, although as a pre-WWII American design it might not be metric at all. 1 3/8" is just shy of 35mm, so that might be it. I didn't get a good read on the thread pitch, but it looked like it was greater than the usual 1mm. I've seen the lens registration distance (i.e. from the back of the lens mount to the film plane) given at 40mm, which is big for a rangefinder, but on the small side for an SLR. If 40mm is right, the only digital cameras you could use lens on and get infinity focus (assuming an adaptor existed) would be Four Thirds SLRs from Olympus, Panasonic, & friends. Oh, and a Leica M8 would probably work too, if you're made of money and actually plan to use the M8 instead of squirreling it away in a vacuum-sealed display case or something. So that might be a problem, but I noticed that the Cintar, at least, is so narrow that you can actually slide the whole back end of the lens into an M42 screw mount. So with a bit of mechanical skill (which I lack), one might be able to cook up a recessed lens adapter, hopefully without requiring mirror lock-up.

I also haven't seen adapters to put other lenses on Arguses. You'd lose rangefinder coupling, naturally, but it'd still be fun to stick a long telephoto or zoom or fisheye (for example) on the front of an Argus and see what you can do with it.



It's worth noting that next year marks the 70th birthday of the Argus C and C2, the C3's predecessors, and 2009 is the 70th birthday of the C3 itself. That'd be a great opportunity for the nice folks at Cosina Voigtlander to do one of those historical reproductions like they do. In recent years they've issued Bessa cameras in Leica screw mount, Contax & Nikon rangefinder mounts, M42 SLR mount, and most recently Leica M bayonet mount. Doing an Argus C3-mount Bessa could be a logical extension of that idea. Well, if you could convince enough people to pay a couple of hundred dollars for a new and rather more convenient camera (with a warranty) instead of an old $15 Argus. I'm not holding my breath, I just think it'd be kind of cool, that's all I'm saying.

i'm being followed by a tram shadow, tram shadow, tram shadow...

Photo 1: Tram.



Photo 2: Shadow.

Does this mean another six weeks of winter? It's the tram's first springtime, so who can say?

tram, tram, tram, yada, yada, yada

If I really, truly cared about gaining street cred as an Important Local Blogger, I probably ought to say something about the Burnside-Couch Couplet thing. But I've never really been one for poetry, quite honestly. So instead, here are even more pics of our fair city's shiny new aerial tram. If I'm boring you, I humbly apologize. I just might say a few words about the couplet whatzit before I'm done, if I feel like it.



The tram, with the moon. I trust neither requires an introduction at this point.



The tram doing its thing, from Lair Hill Park. In the foreground, part of Land Form, a 70's-era sculpture by Bruce West. Portland Public Art has a fun, snarky look at this and other works by Mr. West. For the life of me, I never will understand that era's fascination with brownish rusting chunks of steel. But posing it with the tram seemed, y'know, artistic. The usual art world phraseology is that the two are "carrying on a dialogue" with each other, or some such. But if so, what are they saying? I took the photo and even I have no idea, so it's probably safe to assume they aren't saying anything at all.



Sunset with aerial tram. You can almost see all the rich doctors on board, squinting and shielding their eyes. At least now they have an excuse to buy those $3000 Italian sunglasses they've been coveting.



Another pic from the recent snow apocalypse. This is taken from one tram car looking at the other. I actually had to do a bit of GIMP work on this one to get rid of a reflection of my hand holding the camera. Trust me, it didn't add anything to the shot.



A tree in Lair Hill Park. Oh, and there's something weird in the sky, off in the distance.



Ok, here's both of 'em together. It's like Cute Overload, except with trams instead of cute animals. Not that I'm saying the tram is cute or anything.

And about that couplet: If I can finally turn left off of Burnside (legally), hey, that's great. I'm all in favor. But a streetcar? I like the streetcar just fine and all, but running down Burnside? I'm not so sure about that. As far as I can tell, the powers that be now think the streetcar's primary virtue is that it's really slow and gets in the way of people in cars, who are by definition Pure Eeeeeevillll. Why else would they insist on running them along major streets -- not just Burnside, but also along MLK and Grand through the central east side? And what ever happened to the central east side being a designated "industrial sanctuary", by the way? Now the whole area's supposed to become the next "market rate" (i.e. mega-million-dollar) condo farm, once South Waterfront is all built out. Did we have any public meetings about this and I just didn't hear about it? I suppose that's possible, but it sure smells like yet another backroom deal to me...

Video: A ride on the tram

Here's a video clip from my big tram ride yesterday. Ok, it's not the best video you'll ever see. As usual, I forgot that the camera only wants to film in landscape mode, so the video's sideways until the point where I realized my mistake. Just so you know, the 90 degree rotation you see is merely the camera moving, not the tram as a whole. For $60M, it really ought to be able to do tricks like that, but if it does they're keeping very quiet about it. Anyway, you'll need to turn your head for the first part of the video. Think of it as an opportunity for a little "audience participation". That's my positive spin on the situation, and I'm stickin' to it.

You might note that the video ends part of the way up. This is because my camera batteries died, quite abruptly, at that point. Have I mentioned yet that nobody from Hollywood is returning my calls? It's true.

The audio track includes the operator explaining a few things about how the tram works, so at least the video's kind of educational, somewhat, I guess.

Video: A ride on the tram

D'oh! Blogger got confused and published the same piece twice. If you're looking for my super-exciting tram video, you'll want to go here instead. Enjoy!

Snow Day on the Tram

So today I got to ride our fair city's shiny new aerial tram. Seems that because of all the snow, they decided to temporarily open the thing to the city's non-medical riffraff, people such as myself. They weren't exactly encouraging the public to show up; the announcements said the tram was open to OHSU employees, VA & Shriners hospital staff, patients, and "others" who "need" to travel between Marquam Hill & South Waterfront. I figured that was my opening: I definitely fall into the "other" category, and "need" can be a very, very subjective term when you want it to be. It didn't seem very likely that they'd station a security guard at each end, screening each prospective passenger and rejecting anyone who seemed to merely want to ride it. That wouldn't really be the Portland way. But in case there was a security guard, I figured I'd try to talk my way on board. I'm really not very good at that at all. I almost never succeed at talking my way into anything, but in the worst case I'd just have had to get back on the streetcar and go home. They don't let OHSU grab people off the street for medical experimentation anymore, or at least that's what I've heard.

As I suspected, they were running the opening the Portland way: Open the thing to everyone, but word the announcement in such a way that not a lot of people show up. Imply there are vague, yet strictly enforced, rules on who can board, and let the public imagination run wild. That kind of talk is guaranteed to set off alarm bells with anyone who's ever gone through US Customs. But if quizzed about it, city officials can honestly claim they never specifically said there would be body cavity searches. It's just that they also didn't say there wouldn't be, and relied on the public's fear of confrontation to do the rest. Portlanders are experts at conflict avoidance. There are certain benefits to this, a reasonably low murder rate (by US city standards) for example. But it also means that you'll miss out on a lot of stuff in this town unless you learn how to not take the hint.

In any case, there were a few other joyriders besides myself, and the tram operators seemed happy to see us. Perhaps we were a nice break from all those doctors, endlessly prattling on about their golf scores and real estate deals and trophy wives. For a moment I was almost kind of disappointed that getting on board was so easy. In case you were wondering, no, I wasn't planning to mention anything about being an Important Local Blogger Of Note, or demand "don't you know who I am?". I doubt I'd try that even if I was, in fact, an Important Local Blogger Of Note (which I'm not). I can throw an elbow or two around if I need to, figuratively speaking of course, but I just can't do pretentious or self-important. I can't even fake it. Anyway that would seem like cheating, somehow. Journalists call themselves the "fourth estate", so those of us out here in blogospace are probably the eighth or ninth estate, at minimum, and therefore far, far below the minimum rational threshold for VIP treatment. If anyone tried to give me free stuff simply for having a blog, I'd instantly lose all respect for them.

So riding the tram was more fun than I thought it would be. Whether it's $60M worth of fun, I really couldn't say at this point. The trip only takes a few minutes, and I was taking pictures pretty much constantly both ways, so I may have to go again to ride it just for the experience. I almost got back in line and rode it again immediately, but sadly I had places to be and things to do. Maybe I'll go again tomorrow if it's still free.

The top photo is from the upper tram station at OHSU, with a tram car departing. As I've mentioned before, I've (unofficially) named the two cars "Tom" and "Lance", after a couple of mono-testicled celebrities. I haven't yet figured out which is which, though.




A genuine, real-life photo from the tram, looking north towards downtown Portland. The street on the left is SW 1st, with Naito Pkwy on the right. This angle is probably going to become a standard tourist shot as soon as they start letting real photographers on board the tram. Someday you can tell the grandkids you saw it first right here on this humble and highly obscure blog.




The other tram car, again from the upper station. These babies were pretty much made to order for a really fantastic James Bond fistfight. Yes, yes, I realize they did the fistfight-on-a-tram thing in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but that was a long time ago, and our tram looks way cooler. The governor's office has a couple of people whose 24/7 job is to bring movie productions to Oregon. If they don't already have the whole fight scene choreographed out, they aren't doing their job.

The key unresolved problem is what James Bond would be doing here in the first place, and what he'd do for the rest of the film's running time. We have a few people in town (mostly Republicans) who could be passable Bond villains in a pinch, but none of them have colorful henchmen that I'm aware of. It's a real problem.




Another photo from the tram, this time of SW Terwilliger, looking all snowy and alpine and BMW-commercial-like. You might notice that the road is oddly free of runners. Where'd they all go? DId they stay home just because the whole thing's a treacherous sheet of ice right now? Weenies. Wimps.

Ok, it's also possible they all slipped and tumbled down the hill. But hey, if anyone needs a ride to OHSU, the tram's right here.



Looking downhill (east) from the upper tram station, with the South Waterfront condo towers in the distance, and the Lair Hill & Corbett neighborhoods in front of them. It really is quite a long drop, once you get a good look at it. Neighbors have complained about the possibility of tram-based voyeurs peeping into their backyards -- like anyone in Lair Hill really has much of a backyard -- but nobody seems to have considered the impact, the literal impact, of the constant rain of colorful Bond-villain henchmen plummeting from the sky, crashing through roofs, flattening one's award-winning roses, alarming children and small animals, disrupting traffic even further, and generally lowering the tone of the place. It's always the problems people didn't anticipate that turn out to be the real killers.




The lower tram station. This is kind of boring in comparison to the other photos, but I figured I needed it for completeness. Someday the barge-building operation on the left edge of the picture will be gone, replaced by more condo towers, and then this photo will be a collector's item, sort of. Get 'em while they're hot.


Updated 1/18/06: Here are a few other rider reports I've come across:

• A post on greyduck.net about yesterday's free tram rides.
  
• Tales from the Tube reports on riding the tram last week. And the photo of the thing is nice, although my pics contain snow and are therefore better.
  
• And Russ at Portland Metblogs rode the tram back in December. I'm starting to think that everyone else with a blog has ridden it already. Or at least everyone with a blog and more chutzpah and/or connections than I do, in other words basically everyone.
  

Tram, tram, tram and eggs

Thrilling video of our fair city's new aerial tram, taken fresh this morning. Watch in astonishment as it inches its way up Pill Hill. Gape in awe as it glides by, kind of like a ski lift only much more expensive. Ok, so the tram's the little grey bit off in the distance. Stupid camera didn't want to zoom any further than that in movie mode, unfortunately. But hey, it's what I've got, and here it is. Besides, you aren't paying a cent to watch this, so what's the use in complaining?

Don't bother turning up the sound; all you'll hear is road noise from nearby Interstate 405. I mean, be my guest if you want to -- it's basically just white noise, almost like listening to the ocean (but not as relaxing). It's just that the audio track contains nothing remotely tram-related, which presumably is the reason you're visiting this post. So, well, whatever.

Behold, ze tram!

So I was making a run to the grocery store for last-minute holiday fixins this morning, and noticed a couple of strange objects suspended in the sky overhead. Yep, it's our fair city's shiny new aerial tram. I stopped briefly and took a few photos of the thing, since it's just so... weird...



I read somewhere that they aren't going to take the plastic wrap off the tram cars until it's ready to start carrying passengers. So they're still in the original packaging, but it's unclear whether we can still return them for a full refund.

Actually that's sort of unkind. I'm not actually against the thing. I'm not convinced the general (i.e. non-OHSU) public's getting good value for the money, and I might've had different budgetary priorities if I was calling the shots. But all the same, the whole thing is weirdly fascinating, and I'm sure the tourists will love it. Gawkers on I-5 may become a real problem, which means the Powers That Be may soon offer us an expensive solution, like putting I-5 in a tunnel through the area, maybe. Which might actually be a good idea, just a very expensive good idea. Unless you're one of those hardcore bike fascists, you have to admit I-5 desperately needs at least one more lane in each direction, and there's just nowhere to put them if you leave everything on the surface.





Maybe I'm just obsessing about I-5 because I'll be driving this stretch later today, in the rain, along with everyone else, and I'm Not Looking Forward To It. Oh, and before anyone hassles me about that, Amtrak doesn't serve the town we're going to, and no airlines serve the local airport, and the idea of biking that far in this weather lugging many pounds of mashed potatoes is an amusing notion. I'm sure there are people out there doing it, but I won't be among them. Imagine, biking hours and hours in the driving rain, with nothing to look forward to but a steaming pile of low-sodium Tofurkey on your plate, a tall glass of wheatgrass juice, and light dinner conversation with one's fellow self-righteous masochistic dolts. Gee, that sounds like fun.

Also, I don't own a Segway, or a unicycle, or a horse, or a pogo stick, or a jetpack, or a zeppelin, or a mole machine, so those options aren't viable either, in case you were curious.

I suppose there's also the option of staying at home and doing Thanksgiving dinner with family by videoconference, but the in-laws can be oddly old-fashioned sometimes, and I suspect they'd think it just wasn't the same, somehow. So in short, I don't see any realistic alternative to driving. If there was, I'd happily take it, because nothing's worse than a long-distance drive for the holidays, but there's just no other way. It's troubling that our fair city's gone so far down the transit fanaticism path that I feel like I need to make a public apology for driving to see elderly relatives on Thanksgiving, thus burning fossil fuels and spewing greenhouse gases. I live downtown, and I usually get to work by bus or streetcar, but I walk to work when the weather's nice. I drive maybe once every week or two, and then only for a mile or so, just to pick up groceries. I'm already doing my part, dammit.

Tram Tower: All Grown Up Now

Here's a new photo of the tram tower, with the new top segment added on July 5th.

Tramhenge

So I was looking at those photos of the tram tower I posted the other day, and suddenly it reminded me of something (a bit), and suddenly I was inspired (sort of) and wrote this song (more or less):

[To the tune of Stonehenge, by Spinal Tap]

Tramhenge, where they all read Dwell
Where the boomers live and they do live well
Tramhenge
Where a $cam is a $cam and spoiled pugs dance to
the pipes of pan
Tramhenge
Tis a magic place where the condos rise
With a smug yuppie face
Tramhenge
Where the bureaucrats lie
And the prayer of developers fill the midnight sky
And you my love, won't you take my hand
We'll go forward in time to that mystic land
Where the tapas fry and the cats meow
I will take you there
I will $$$how you how

It's not a very good song, is it?

Don't hold your breath for an mp3 of it or anything. If you thought the lyrics were bad, oh, you haven't heard me try to sing it. And you won't. Oh, the humanity...

---

It's not a very good blog post, is it?

Ok, fine, here's some cute prosimians to look at, so you don't go away feeling cheated or anything.

Thx. Mgmt.

Those tram tower pics I promised

As I mentioned earlier, today I walked down and had a gander at the new tram tower. I haven't yet found the perfect adjective to describe the thing. The closest I've managed so far is improbable, which is true, but doesn't really convey a lot of information. Maybe I'll be inspired once they bolt on the top segment.



Ok, phallic is a fairly apt (if overused) description as well. I think it's awfully amusing that the city added the big middle segment on Midsummer's Eve, as if they were raising the, ahem, maypole or something. I guess I really don't mind the occasional state-sponsored pagan fertility ritual, just so long as there's no mead, and no Morris dancing. You have to draw the line somewhere, after all.

The tram tower grows taller!

The middle segment of our shiny new tram tower was bolted on sometime late last night, and here it is. Compare this to the photo I posted when the first segment went up.

My previous post just got a link from a guy who's working on building the thing, to illustrate what it is that he's working on. How cool is that?

So do I like the thing? Do I hate it? I haven't made up my mind yet, despite what all my carping and complaining might lead you to believe. Maybe it'll be totally fantastic once it's up and running, for all I know.

The most common complaint you hear about it is over the ever-growing cost. The public originally got a bargain-budget $15M figure, and now we're at $50M and counting. I don't really see why anyone's surprised the city & friends lowballed the initial estimate. You do that to get all the key players on board, and get construction started. Then it's easy sailing the rest of the way, because nobody wants a partially-built tram just sitting around gathering dust. It's the oldest trick in the book. I'd be shocked if it didn't happen when the great pyramids were built. And when people say nobody will care what it cost 75 years down the road, I'm sure they're right. Look at the St. Johns Bridge. The city spent way more than it needed to, and built what's still more or less a bridge to nowhere. The taxpayers were stuck with a huge bond debt right in the middle of the depression, and we could't afford to build any more bridges again until the mid-60's. But it sure is pretty. There's no denying that.

While I'm at it, I'd like to dispel a couple of common misconceptions about the tram. One, it is absolutely untrue that the tower grows -- poof, just like that -- every time the city lies about what it's going to cost. Two, there were no magic beans involved, here or anywhere else in the South Waterfront district. Those are just fairy tales, and they aren't even the right fairy tales. The thing would be much cheaper if magic beans or lying politicians were involved. No, the correct fairy tale is that we in this city are going to build an enlightened new economy where everyone is rich, upscale, thin, liberal, and ultra-educated, and nobody makes anything more complicated than a half-caf soy mocha. For everything else, we'll rely on the hard labor of cute little six-year-olds in China (but we'll try our hardest not to think about that part, because that would mess around with our precious inner calm).

Behold, the Tram Tower!

The angled whitish bit you see in the picture is the lower half of portland's exciting new aerial tram tower. Over the next few weeks it's supposed to get a little over twice as tall as it is now, and then sprout cables from the top some time in August.

Updated 6/22/06: The second segment just went up, and I've got a photo of it here.

Parts of the South Waterfront district are now open for people to go and wander around in, which I did a couple of weeks back. I've been meaning to post some of the photos but (like today's Washington Park post) I just didn't get around to it until now. So here we are. As usual, clicking on any photo will take you to a larger version:


Two pics of the twin Meriwether condo towers. The whole area's still a construction site, but people are already living in the finished parts of these buildings. The city's promising a public pedestrian walkway next to the river for the full length of the South Waterfront district, sometime in the near future, but that part's still closed off so far. In the second photo you can also see OHSU's new clinic building, and the lower tram station directly in front of it, plus the Zidell Marine barge factory in the foreground. The barge factory is supposed to go away sometime soon, to make way for more condos. This absolutely must happen ASAP, because people who actually make things are icky and non-upscale, and need to be shooed away so they don't alarm the idle rich (and their darling weimaraners). Your tax dollars at work.



Two photos of OHSU's new clinic building. The early PR led us all to think this was going to be a new advanced research facility, but no, instead it's going to house yoga studios and day spas and such, catering to affluent and otherwise healthy aging boomers. Because that's far more profitable than treating actual sick people, and that's the only thing that matters anymore.

The construction in the right foreground of the first pic is for a new city park spanning two blocks. There used to be a mini storage facility here, until the city decided it ought to be a park instead and forced the existing business out. More of your tax dollars at work.


The John Ross condo tower, which is supposed to top out somewhere over 30 stories when complete. This is the same building you see in the background in the tram tower photo. Yes, even more of your tax dollars at work.