recent (mostly) floral activity

I recently asserted that it's been a bad year for flowers. I do think that's true, but that hasn't stopped me from taking photos, or from uploading a few of those photos. I just haven't posted too many here. Not for lack of material; I just sort of got out of the habit. Over time, the average post here has gotten longer and involved more research, and the old-style fluffy content-free posts full of flower photos have kind of fallen by the wayside. The last one was almost a month ago, and there've actually been only two posts here since then. I've got a few more in draft form that I'll get out the door as soon as I have time and feel up to it. In other words, not today, and probably not tomorrow either.

In the meantime, here's a supersized batch of pics taken over the last couple of months. Many were taken with old manual-focus screw-mount lenses, used on the ol' 40D via an adapter. I'd explain what was what and how I did it and why and so forth, but then this wouldn't be a fluffy content-free post, and it'd take longer to write, and I probably couldn't do it in one sitting, so it'd end up in the drafts folder, thus becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution. And we can't have that, can we? So here are the photos, without further ado:

McCarthy Park expedition

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Today's thrilling adventure takes us to Portland's little-known McCarthy Park, a tiny spot on the Willamette up on Swan Island. Yes, industrial Swan Island, which isn't an island (anymore) and has no swans. The park's just a small grassy area tucked between two Freightliner office buildings, with a few benches, a historical marker, and a small ramp for launching small boats, probably nothing bigger than a canoe or a rowing shell. The big deal here is that it's about the only (legal) public access to the river between downtown & the St. Johns Bridge, so the park offers an unusual view of the river and downtown. So I thought I'd go take a few photos, and then see what (if anything) the Interwebs have to say about the place.

The signs indicate the park's owned by the Port of Portland and not by the city, which may explain why I'd never heard of it before last week. The Port's all about no-nonsense he-man stuff -- cargo ships, airports, and heavy industrial parks -- so operating a grassy riverside picnic spot isn't really their core business, and they don't make a lot of noise about it. Zero, in fact, as far as I can tell.

My guess is that the park was created as part of the Port's gigantic Swan Island Industrial Park. Perhaps when the Port decided this would be the white-collar corner of Swan Island, they figured they ought to spruce it up a little.

The Wikimapia page for one of the adjacent Freightliner buildings claims it used to be an upscale shopping center back in the 70's. Now, if anything Wikimapia is even less authoritative than Wikipedia (even I've added to it on occasion), but the "Ports O'Call" building is kind of unusual. It's kind of a rambling Craftsman-style complex, and it's not hard to imagine it divided up into swanky boutiques. Probably swanky macrame and gold medallion boutiques, it being the 70's and all. Apparently the idea of shopping on Swan Island sounded just as weird back then as it does now, since the mall eventually cratered (according to Wikimapia) and eventually Freightliner bought it.

The industrial park (and mall) replaced earlier WWII-era shipyards, which in turn displaced Portland's original airport. So what comes next, condo towers?

The city's "River Renaissance" site has a page about the park, describing it thusly:

McCarthy Park is a small, relatively unknown park on Swan Island with beautiful views of the city and the river. It is mostly used by local workers during lunch hours and after work. The park is the only place where people can access the river between the Steel Bridge and the St. Johns bridge.

It also appears on the city's North Portland Walking Map, which is where I first heard of it, and it also shows up on the state's Willamette River Recreation Guide, although neither provides any further info beyond the location.

A May 2002 Oregonian article, "When Business Shuts Down, Island Is Like Private Hideaway", sings the praises of the park, which we're told is quite nice outside of 9-to-5 business hours.

McCarthy Park also shows up in a blog post at OregonLive as a fun place to take kids, with all the rocks and driftwood along the riverbank. Gee, I dunno. I'm not sure touching rocks and driftwood along this stretch of the river is such a great idea. I mean, sure, maybe all those ooky chemicals will give your kid amazing superpowers. Or maybe not. Probably not, in fact.

It turns out the path through the park is just one segment of the larger "North Portland Greenway Trail". Right now this trail stretches for about a mile on Swan Island. The eventual goal is for the trail to follow the river from downtown all the way to St. Johns and beyond. Which is pretty ambitious, since right now much of the route is a patchwork of heavy industrial uses and Superfund sites.

A local advocacy group called npGreenway has a map of the envisioned route. They've also got a Flickr stream here.

I ran across couple of articles about the trail at the Tribune and BikePortland, and a fascinating, in-depth blog post, "Walking the Greenway Trail on Swan Island".

I honestly had no idea there was a park on Swan Island, much less a mile-long trail. I realize it's been in the paper a few times, and I might have even glanced at the news a bit. But it's also way up in North Portland, outside my neighborhood, so I suppose I just wasn't paying attention.

I think the idea behind the trail is to sort of mirror the westside's Willamette Greenway Trail, which was plotted out way back in 1987. It's still not really complete, so it may be a while yet before you can bike out to Kelly Point on the new NoPo edition.

Here's a BikePortland piece about a recent bike tour of the area further north, including the area around Bridge 5.1 I was too chicken to go investigate. I was kind of pleased to see that one commenter echoes my sentiments about adding pedestrian/bike access to the rail bridge. It wasn't me. Cross my heart.

Incidentally, it kind of amuses me how the alleged "park" properties up there have such sunny, bucolic names: "Willamette Cove" and "Harbor View". They sound like upscale gated communities or something. You certainly wouldn't hear the names and think "Superfund", but that's what they are.

I didn't follow the Greenway trail when I was there, partly because I didn't realize the extent of it, but mostly because I was worried about parking. If you look at the satellite photo above, you'll see parking lots all over the place, but they're for Freightliner employees only. I parked a few blocks away at McDonalds, but I figured I shouldn't stay away too long in case the tow truck mafia was staking the place out. As I left I went through the drive-thru and got a coffee and one of those new "Southern-style" chicken biscuits, I guess to get right with the Law or whatever. Turned out to be kind of tasty, actually. I've seen a couple of mentions of there being dedicated parking for the Greenway somewhere else, but I'm not sure quite where it is. You might be better off taking the bus -- both the 72 and the 85 finish their runs just a block or two from the park. I know that's what I'll do next time around.

The rest of my Flickr photoset is here. FWIW.

Tecotosh

Here are a few photos of "TECOTOSH", the new-ish large sculpture outside the front entrance of PSU's new-ish CS/Engineering building. It occurred to me recently that I hadn't posted any pics of it or said anything about it here, even though it's in my general neighborhood and it's been around for about a year now. So I figured it was overdue, plus I really needed some new local photo fodder -- Lovejoy Fountain is still not up and running this year, and lately I've gotten sort of bored with Rusting Chunks #5.



So the artist's website describes it thusly:

This sculpture is a graphic illustration of four basic engineering principles: tension, compression, torsion, and shear. Its title, "TECOTOSH", is composed of the first two letters of each of those terms, and its structure is intentionally provocative from an engineering standpoint.

Now that's refreshingly straightforward. I like it. When I first saw the name I was afraid it was some sort of New Agey, pseudo-Northwest pseudo-tribal mumbo-jumbo thing, but no, it's an acronym. All engineers love acronyms. Even lowly software "engineers" such as myself love acronyms. Yay, acronyms!



I probably ought to have done the title of this post in all caps, the name being an acronym and all. That still feels like shouting, acronym or no, so I didn't, but it seemed like it was worth pointing out. I've been called lots of names over the years, but so far nobody's called me "insufficiently pedantic", that I'm aware of. Not to my face, at any rate.



The aforementioned basic engineering concepts are explained somewhat simply here and here. The second link uses Flash, even. So TECOTOSH illustrates four of the five fundamental engineering loads, the fifth being "bending". The artist probably could've worked some bending into it too, but that would've made for an even longer and more unpronounceable acronym.



While we're being pedantic -- ok, while I'm being pedantic -- there's small sign next to TECOTOSH indicating the surrounding mini-plaza is officially known as "Gerding Edlen Development Plaza". I don't know if it counts as a park, exactly, but it is a public space with a name. So therefore I suppose this post is technically part of my semi-occasional parks-and-public-spaces series, if anyone's keeping score at home. I say "technically" because I've never seen anyone use this name to refer to the place. No references to the name anywhere on the interwebs, so I suppose this post will be the first, for whatever that's worth. Not that I exactly plan to use the name either. I can't really see myself putting the name in a post title, it being a company name and all.

I mean, I suppose the name is understandable, as the company was a major donor to the engineering building, in addition to working on the project. Part of their work on the project involved a cool geothermal well system that helps heat and cool the building. Naturally, the building as a whole is fully LEED-o-licious and sustainable and so forth, since that stuff is tres chic right now.

In any case, there's not much else to "Gerding Edlen Development Plaza" besides TECOTOSH itself. The usual modern concrete bits and native(?) grasses. It's probably sustainable too, or something.

Incidentally, it must be great to be in the native grass business these days. Everyone wants native grasses, but they don't want to go dig up and transplant their own native grasses from a nearby field or whatever. I'm not sure why, but it simply isn't done. Instead they pay you, and they probably pay you handsomely, because anything green and sustainable and LEED-o-licious is exorbitantly expensive. Them's the rules. So they pay you, and you go to a nearby field on their behalf and dig up some native grasses and rake in the dough, and everyone goes home happy.



Other random bits about TECOTOSH on the interwebs:

• Photos here and here.
  
• It appears on the cover of this brochure from the Oregon Arts Commission.
  
• Some PR about it from the university.
  
• A story at the Portland Business Journal
  
• And a mention in a piece about local glass art. You noticed the glass bits on TECOTOSH, right? They can be kind of hard to see unless it's sunny. Which is a problem, this being Portland and all.
  

Oh, and the rest of my TECOTOSH photoset is here. FWIW.

photo weekday, umpteenth edition

It seems to be a bad year for flowers. In previous years, around this point I'd be posting a new batch of flower photos every few days, or at least once a week or so. This year, not so much. I blame the weather, specifically the accursed La Nina phenomenon. It's not that I'm jaded and tired of flowers, I'm pretty sure of that much. I think.

In any case, here's a pseudorandom assortment of recent-ish pics, some with flowers, and others without them. FWIW.

Wherein I declare "Mission Accomplished"....

Or, "Evil Bendy Gets Respectable". Being scenes from my Recent Adventures in Homebuying, as poorly reenacted with small toys.

Ok, "reenacted" is a bit of a stretch, actually. Regular readers of this humble blog (yes, both of you) might recall that Evil Bendy here is my occasional yellow rubbery alter ego. And the rock pictured here is a little token of appreciation from the title company you get on closing. So it's, like, symbolic, or whatever. Here's another one:

The rock, incidentally, has a little sticker on the bottom saying "Made in China". Wow. The social-commentary-on-modern-society angle pretty much writes itself. Come to think of it, Evil Bendy is probably made in China too. But I digress.

I should emphasize that the next photo is a "during" photo, not an "after" one, illustrating numerous scenes from the homebuying process. Honestly, I don't understand why you can't just buy online and cut out all the middle-persons. So many things to sign, so many dead trees. I suppose the process and its associated rituals have barely changed in decades. I mean, other than the fact that we found the place on Craigslist, and thus completely missed out on being herded around town by realtors, and all the rest of the house-hunting half of the experience. Still, the Craigslist ad ought to have included a "Click to Buy!" button. It would have simplified matters somewhat. That's all I'm saying.

So next we have the mellow "after" photo. I've been surprised by how much my general stress level has dropped since buying the place (at least so far). Ok, so now it's a simple matter of 30 years of mortgage payments (hence the "Mission Accomplished"), but that I can do. It's uncertainty that I can't stand, and there's definitely a lot less of that than before. So now that things are settled and we're officially Responsible Adults and all that, maybe now we'll get a cat, and this humble blog will devolve into an endless series of cute kitten photos.

Some might call that an improvement, actually.

1916: Portland's Stanley Cup

So it's Stanley Cup time again. If you're like most Portlanders, you probably don't care too much about hockey. Maybe you didn't even realize the playoffs were on. That's understandable, I guess, since we don't have a pro team of our own here, just a junior team, and the Winter Hawks may be moving to Salem soon.

But Portland wasn't always the hockey backwater it is today. Once upon a time, back in the early 20th century, our fair city was home to the Portland Rosebuds, the very first pro team south of the Canadian border. Ok, so "Rosebuds" is not a very fierce name by today's standards, but it sounds like they weren't half bad. In addition to being the first US-based team, the Rosebuds were also the first US team to play for the Stanley Cup. Seriously. In the 1916 Stanley Cup Finals, Portland lost to the Montreal Canadiens, losing Game 5 of the 5-game series by a single goal. (The following year, the Seattle Millionaires became the first US team to win the Cup finals. Bastards.)

But there's a bit more to the story. Engraved on the Cup are the words "Portland Ore./PCHA Champions/1915–16", listing us alongside all the Cup champions in years before and since. The years prior to the 1914-15 season were the "Challenge Cup" era, in which you won the cup by challenging the current owner for it; if you beat them, the Cup was yours. It was sort of like how boxing and the America's Cup work these days. Then the rules changed, setting up an annual series between the champions of the East Coast (NHA) and West Coast (PCHA) leagues of the era, with the Cup awarded to the winner. Despite this change, three of the next four seasons saw teams engraving their name on the Cup after defeating the previous year's champion -- the only exception was the 1916-17 season, in which Montreal repeated as NHA champions before losing the Cup to Seattle. So according to the era's standard practice (if not strictly according to the rules), the Cup belonged to Portland for just over a month, from the end of the regular season (Feb. 25th, 1916) through the end of the finals (March 30th). Purists and sticklers may argue the cup wasn't truly and officially ours, but I think reasonable people can disagree on that detail. Or more to the point, I know what I prefer to believe.

Besides being a fun historical curiosity, the 1916 cup may come in handy if we ever manage to land an NHL team of our own, whether by expansion or relocation. A couple of years ago the Pittsburgh Penguins were thinking about relocating, and Portland was on the short list. In the end they managed to swing themselves a schweet deal to stay in Pittsburgh, but you can't help but wonder what might have been. They're in the Stanley Cup finals this year, you know. In recent years the cup's often gone to teams in lucrative markets with no historical roots in the sport (Anaheim, Raleigh NC, Tampa Bay, etc.). We, however would be able to spin a win as the end of a 92 year Cup drought. So, sure, we technically would've gone nearly all of the drought without a major league team of any kind, but a drought's a drought, right?

One reason most Portlanders have probably never heard of the Rosebuds is that essentially nothing has survived from that era. The team went away, the whole league went away, and the old Portland Ice Arena where they played in was eventually demolished in the 1950's. Aside from a few old photographs displayed at Memorial Coliseum, there's no obvious evidence the Rosebuds ever existed, and to see those photos you'd have to go and endure three periods of the present-day Winter Hawks. I'm only that masochistic a couple of times a season, tops. There are a few tidbits around the interwebs concerning Portland hockey history, like this article at the PSU Daily Vanguard, and a site dedicated to the memory of the 1960s-era, not-quite-major-league Portland Buckaroos. That's a separate and rather colorful bit of Portland history I don't have space for here, so check out that site if you're curious.

In case you were wondering, the Portland Ice Arena was located on NW Marshall St., up in Northwest Portland, on the block that's now home to Marshall Union Manor, a high-rise retirement community constructed circa 1974. (More info here and here.) So here's what the spot looks like today:

Free Beer @ Vera Katz Park

So I was just at the grand opening for Vera Katz Park. If you hurry, there's still free beer until 7. And even better, the politicians and dignitaries are done talking now. I think.

Just for fun, show up looking homeless (or even better, be homeless) and see if they'll give you your free beer or not.

Top photo: The evening's musical entertainment, plus some guy with a video camera.

But that's not what you care about. Here's the line for beer:




Here's the tribal invocation courtesy of the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde -- you know, the Spirit Mountain folks. They donated to the theater, dontcha know. The color guard is an interesting touch. Curious how the only way you'll get a flag at a Portland event is if one of the local tribes brings one. I dunno, that just sort of screams "historical irony", if you ask me.

The POW-MIA flag is an additional interesting touch.





Our new mayor. Who I voted against, as it so happens:




A flower, plus my souvenir beer mug. I told you I was going for the free beer, didn't I?




The developer behind the Brewery Blocks, whose name adorns the theater next door. Lots of talk from him and others about visionary plans and so forth. I get the distinct impression that a visionary plan is one that makes you a lot of money.




Spectators:




One of the theater execs, whose name I didn't catch. There were at least two guys from the theater, and both spent a lot of time talking about their capital campaign, fundraising, important donors, and so forth. Straight out of central casting, if you'll forgive the expression. Seriously, I kept thinking about Slings and Arrows the whole time when either one was talking.




Oh, and the guest of honor, Vera herself. Who I actually have a soft spot for, despite my usual tendency to rant about the Pearl and all the shiny-trinkets-for-the-idle-rich schemes emanating from city hall.

Vera Katz Park

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A few photos of our fair city's shiny (& tiny) new Vera Katz Park, the Pearl District's very latest high-concept amenity. It's an odd sort of park (or will be -- the official dedication won't be until May 29th.) It's basically just a wide sidewalk on SW Davis St. between 10th & 11th, next to the Gerding Theater (the old Armory building). There's a water feature running the length of the block, and a sort of bioswale-like arrangement with a few native(?) plants, grasses and horsetails, mostly. In short, if you go, don't bring the softball team along. Unless you're headed to the new Deschutes Brewpub across the street, I mean -- but that's a topic for another post, as soon as I get around to visiting the thing. There's also nothing here to satisfy the off-leash dog mafia. As much as your darling little pug might want to take a crap in the bioswale, it's a safe bet it's Not Allowed. Violate the rule, and the Proper Authorities will either taser you, or buy you $30 fruity drinks at Bluehour at taxpayer expense, depending entirely on who you are and who you know at city hall.

Ok, that's not entirely fair. There's something about the place that brings out my snarky and irritable side. Or more to the point, it's something about the idea of the place, not so much the place itself.

Case in point: I mentioned the park in an earlier post, where I described it as:

The future site of "Vera Katz Park", a fancy name for the little strip of land on the north side of the Armory Theater. It's a fitting name in many ways. It's a minor adjunct to the grand dreams of a well-connected developer, and it's been delayed greatly due to cost overruns and general mismanagement.

Yikes! That wasn't very nice at all. I must've been in a bad mood, even so more than normal. This time around I'll try to just talk about the park itself, and I'll strive to be fair and balanced about it. No, really, I will.

I took a few photos of the park. A few are in this post, and more are in my inevitable Flickr photoset. At least those are fair and balanced, I think, probably.

Ok, so a few links about the place:

• A piece on the design of the park. Same people who were behind Collins Circle -- which I'm very much not a fan of. Vera Katz Park is an improvement; it's fine, I guess, but I'm still not entirely sold on it. I do like the idea of turning awkward little bits into parks, but I'm ambivalent about the execution on this one. The black stone echoes the basalt of the armory building -- I think that works for the most part. It might've fit even better if they'd used actual local basalt for the job. Perhaps there's some technical reason that wouldn't work, I dunno. The overall effect is excessively austere, to my taste. All that polished black stone makes it look a bit like a war memorial. A few strategically placed flowers might cheer it up a bit... or it might look even more like a war memorial that way. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with war memorials (other than war, obviously) -- it's just that there's nothing about it that seems very Vera-like at all. Jamison Square would fit the bill a lot better, if it wasn't already named in honor of someone else.
  
  William Morris advocated the notion that if you're going to have something around, it ought to be either beautiful or useful. So I'm trying to figure out which it's supposed to be here. It's a little of each, but not really either. I suppose the bioswale is useful. It had better be, because I wouldn't call it beautiful. Unless we're making a fetish of austerity, I mean.
• The park cost us $250,000 (see here). So to give the whole city the Vera Katz Park treatment, it'd be $1M per block times a jaw-dropping number of blocks. Hmm. This doesn't sound like a concept we can easily put into practice citywide. If you can get away with not making each sidewalk an art installation, just a strictly utilitarian water-quality feature, I'm sure it'd knock the price down a bit. Suppose you can do the basic bioswale part for $50k (a figure I just dreamed up), that's still $200k per block times the same jaw-dropping number of city blocks. And if you use the same design as here, you lose on-street parking for the length of the block. While that may please bike and streetcar activists and the city's parking garage operators, I'm not so sure the general public or retailers would be quite as enthusiastic. So I think it's safe to say that if we do build more of these, we won't build a huge number of them. Therefore -- assuming these really do work to protect water quality and keep icky stuff out of the river -- naturally we'd want to target them to problem areas around town. Is the Pearl District really a problem area? I don't know. I suppose it might be.
  
  Speaking of parking, it's probably worth pointing out that the Brewery Blocks development, of which the park is a very small component, includes a vast multistory, multiblock underground parking garage. I imagine we'll be told that taking out the parking spots on one side of the street is a step toward the coming Glorious Car-Free Future. That may be true of the park itself, but the project taken as a whole sends a very different message. The message, as far as I can tell, is that it's ok to drive a monstrous earth-crushing SUV and not feel guilty, so long as you hide it underground when you aren't using it. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.
• Some architectural blathering about the park, on the Portland Center Stage website, PCS being the new tenant next door in the theater. So of course they like the thing. I don't know if it technically belongs to them, but they seem to have been the driving force behind it. The post tries to explain why the park is great, for those of us who don't grok it immediately.
  
  I've become convinced that contemporary architecture is roughly 98% marketing, 1% marketing, and 1% engineering. The latest buzzwords just so happen to be "green" and "sustainable". Not, I think, because the industry actually cares about these things, but simply because they sell. It's the usual handwaving, with a double helping of guilt. The results are much more expensive than "normal" buildings, and ugly too, but anyone who questions the dogma is accused of being a earth-destroying, kitten-eating, Bush-voting philistine. I just want to know how on earth we're going to save the world when the only things we're creating are by and for the richest 0.001 percent of the world's population, and nobody else. And at what point do we move past the endless "awareness-raising" symbolic acts and do something that actually matters? Have we just given up on that? Are we just going to build a sort of hermetically sealed bio-dome over the Pearl District so the wealthy can survive the coming apocalypse, and to hell with everyone else? Is that how this goes down?
  
  The apocalyptic form of environmentalism has always made me uncomfortable. It's always struck me as a sort of quasi-religious mindset, and as a happily non-religious person, even quasi-religions and their believers make me nervous. Even when the facts indicate that something bad lies ahead (as is the case with climate change, and the ozone layer before that), I always get the impression that certain people are enjoying the idea of a coming apocalypse rather too much. In the coming apocalypse, the unbelievers will be laid low, and somehow the faithful will be spared the worst of it, sort of a New Age version of the fundies' "Rapture". As a member of the faithful, one must constantly engage in extravagant and highly visible displays of personal virtue -- driving a Prius, wringing one's hands endlessly about paper vs. plastic, buying a 5000 square foot LEED-certified vacation home, and so forth. This way, whoever or whatever unspecified entity that's doing the sparing during the apocalypse will take notice, I guess.
  
  Sometimes I wonder how many of these people had a strict religious upbringing, and ended up rebelling against it in substance but not in style. In a way, I do kind of see what makes the religious right so angry about the environmental movement as a whole: They see it as a competitor, an alternate end of the world. They're wrong, of course, like they are about everything else, but I can see how the notion would occur to them.
• Anyway, here's a post at Portland Architecture while the park was under construction. Which process took freakin' forever due to interminable delays in materials and whatnot. One commenter mentions the stone came from China. How's that for sustainable, eh?
  
  The post mentions that the rough edges to the stone help ward off skateboarders. I guess that fits. I seem to recall that Vera never liked skateboarders very much.
• There's a bit about the upcoming dedication party here.
  

  
  On May 29th Portland Center Stage will host a community dedication to celebrate the completion of the Vera Katz Park, truly the final crown jewel of the Brewery Blocks rehabilitation. Festivities will include a tribal blessing, theater, dance, conversation, food, beverage, bioswales and Vera. The event is from 5:00 pm until 7:00 pm and is open to the public
  

  
  
  A "tribal blessing"? WTF?! Am I the only person who sees church & state issues with this? Why is it that tribal blessings are OK, and it's not OK to also invite a pastor from some warmongering, Bush-worshiping suburban megachurch? People will probably argue it's not the same thing. And that's precisely what the whole Establishment Clause thing is all about: If the government starts drawing distinctions between "religions we like" and "religions we don't", and granting the former a bunch of privileges unavailable to the latter, well, how can you really criticize Texas or Alabama when they do the same thing, reversing who's in the two categories?
  
  Oh, and what's with listing Vera after the bioswales?
• A bit about the stone used in the park. Interesting note, the armory itself seems to be a brick and basalt structure. Basalt being the local volcanic rock that doesn't need to be trucked in from afar, burning a ton of fossil fuels in the process. Just sayin'.
• The armory project was financed in part with something called a "New Markets Tax Credit", a federal program intended to spur "community development". Organizations wanting to qualify for the program must do a variety of things, including (allegedly):
  

  
  # demonstrate a primary a mission of serving, or providing investment capital for, low-income communities or low-income persons; and
  # maintain accountability to residents of low-income communities through representation on a governing board of or advisory board to the entity.
  

  
  
  If I recall correctly, the armory project qualified because, technically speaking, it's geographically close to Old Town, which unlike the Pearl is a bona-fide low income area. So next time you drive down Burnside and see people sleeping in doorways or waiting in line at one of the soup kitchens, remember that the Gerding Theater exists for their benefit. At least on paper. In reality, not so much.
  
  In any case, program participants are required to produce a "Community Impacts Report", spinning, er, explaining how the world is a better place because they got a juicy tax break. The armory's report describes the park thusly:
  

  
  • A New Park In an effort to provide community benefit outside the Armory
  walls, Vera Katz Park “greens” the existing sidewalk and eliminates the parking
  spaces. The park will serve as a water filter for rainfall, and as the only
  green park in the immediate area (except for numerous green roofs), a shady
  resting place.
  

  
  
  There's a bit more about the tax credit here. Now, I realize that arts funding is an unending struggle, and sometimes you have to be extremely creative and take a "the end justifies the means" attitude to get anything accomplished, and the New Markets program requirements were so written vaguely and broadly that the armory managed to qualify. I realize all that. But I can't help but think about all the real low-income projects that weren't funded because the tax credits went to the armory instead. It's probably pointless to wish the city would stop ripping off the poor so the richest 1% of the population can have more goodies. But I kind of wish they'd at least not flaunt it quite so much.
• All of that said, it seems the grand opening bash will feature free beer. Free beer! Yay! I'll forgive nearly anything if there's free beer involved. I mean, sure, I expect the offer of free beer doesn't extend to the aforementioned denizens of Old Town, but really, who can quibble and complain and carp when there's free beer to be had? Not I! Yay, free beer!

There was a strange incident while I was taking the last few photos of the place. Some random guy wandered by while I was busy focusing, and said something to the effect that I wasn't allowed to take photos of the park because it was copyrighted or something. Which isn't entirely absurd -- ok, it is absurd, but it's not unusual. Consider the case of "the Bean" in Chicago, for example. Although I think even that only refers to for-profit photography, and this humble blog remains proudly noncommercial. (Although if the price was right, and there were no provisions involving my "immortal soul", and the proposer wasn't evil, and the proposal was at least somewhat interesting, I just might consider selling out to The Man.) Anyway, I wasn't entirely sure how to take that. I looked up and scowled at the guy because he was interrupting my concentration and artistic vibe and whatever, but I didn't say anything. It was pretty clear he wasn't a security guard or anything, so I went back to what I was doing. He kept walking, swearing at me a few times and then flipping me off. For the life of me, I can't imagine what he was on about. Was it economic resentment, maybe? Was I on the receiving end of the age-old class struggle? Or was it just National Hassle-The-Nerd-With-The-Expensive-Camera Day? Or maybe he'd just gone off his meds. I suppose that's possible -- I imagine your average crazy person doesn't know about the whole public art vs. copyright issue, but then the Pearl probably attracts a better class of crazy person. Or maybe he's just one of those people who wander around angry all the time, looking for targets to take it out on. I dunno. It was awfully peculiar, whatever the reason was.

I do object to naming things after living people, whoever they happen to be. It seems to be a relatively recent practice in Oregon, as far as I can tell only going back to the late 1980's. We started naming things after Sen. Mark Hatfield in gratitude for his bringing home piles of congressional pork. It's fortunate we never got around to naming anything after Neil Goldschmidt or Bob Packwood, or we'd have had to chisel their names off and pretend it never happened. I don't mean to go off on a huge tangent, but here's a short list of things I came up with of various things around town named after Portland mayors, living and otherwise.

• Vera Katz Park
• O'Bryant Square, named for Hugh O'Bryant, Portland's first mayor, who by all accounts was a complete failure in office. The park itself has no historical links to the guy, that I'm aware of. The Park Blocks were probably still howling wilderness at that point.
• Terry Schrunk Plaza, plus a housing project named for Mayor Schrunk somewhere up in St. Johns.
• Pennoyer St., and indirectly Governors Park
• A small and unobtrusive plaque of Bud Clark at Saturday Market location
• Failing St., pedestrian bridge, and school (now home to the Natural Medicine college)
• Ladd's Addition, and Ladd Acres school out in Aloha
• David Thompson fountain (the elk)
• Chapman Square (and old Chapman Ave., now 18th or 19th)

I don't suppose they'll be naming any parks after Tom Potter anytime soon -- unless it's a sort of sunny veranda where you can rent a rocking chair for an hour or two and take a nap, or daydream, or have a "visioning process", whatever the hell that is.