august infrared

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.

reflected, autumn

This is the area around 3rd & Ankeny, going by the bit of the "Keep Portland Weird" slogan you can see here. Don't bother doing a pilgrimage this time -- in RL it didn't actually look very much like what you see here.

big pink in a window

A few more window-reflection shots, this time of the US Bank tower, a.k.a. "Big Pink". This sort of photo requires an empty storefront with butcher paper behind the windows, with a good view of something you want photos of. The worse the economy is, the more options you have for this.

As a result, you would be within your rights to assume that some sort of message or social commentary is intended, but there really isn't. Not consciously, at least, unless you count "Empty storefronts are kind of melancholy and sad". Which is more of a truism than a message, really.

Still, sometimes I like to play like this reflection stuff kinda-resembles the sort of photo they teach you to make in Art Sk00l. And in Art Sk00l (and beyond), one is more or less obligated to at least pretend one's work embodies various Important Truths, because that's a key part of the product, you see. This juices up the perceived value and desirability of the work, thereby enabling one to starve somewhat more slowly. So, in short, feel free to imagine I'm trying to say something deep and meaningful, if you like.

Hall & 14th

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A few photos of the nameless city park at SW 14th & Hall, just across I-405 from downtown Portland. I've mentioned the place before, in these three posts, but I've never gotten around to doing a post about it. Quite possibly that's because it's not really that fascinating. It's a small triangle of land next to a bend in the freeway, and my guess is that it's a leftover scrap of land from when the freeway went in. There are a few flowers, some landscaping, some lights and benches, and a trash bin or two, and that's about it. The place was on my TODO list anyway because it's both obscure and close to home, but I still never got around to going back and taking photos. Then I realized I still had some photos from 2007 that I'd never used, and I might as well go with those. They get the basic idea across, at least.

Via PortlandMaps, we learn that the triangle is designated "R246890". Which isn't much of a name, but at least it's unique. We also learn that the park comes to 0.53 acres, and the land technically belongs to the Oregon Dept. of Transportation rather than the city, although I gather the city (rather than ODOT) looks after it. This is not terribly surprising considering that it's right next to a freeway, and it may explain why the city's never gotten around to naming it, putting up a sign for it, etc.

I've already mentioned, in one of those previous posts, the sole news item I could find related to it, a 2006 change in the park hours. Assuming the policy's still in force, after 9pm you're still free to walk through the park, but loitering is verboten. I would hope that if, for example, you're walking through at 9:04, and you drop your car keys and stop to pick them up, you don't immediately get tased by Officer Friendly. But you never know. Chances are that the real-life policy is to hassle anyone who looks homeless, and convince them to go be poor somewhere else. The park is surprisingly secluded despite being wedged between a freeway and a somewhat twee historic neighborhood. It's down a slope from the street and only accessible from a couple of side entrances, and it's surrounded by trees on all sides. If you're homeless and just looking for somewhere to sleep and not be disturbed, this would seem like an ideal spot.

Note that I said "seem" there. I haven't actually encountered anyone living here, and I'm just deducing based on city policy. Maybe the freeway is just too noisy. I suppose if I was really dedicated to this whole blogging thing, I'd grab a ratty blanket and a 40 of Old E and go try it myself. But I didn't do that, and doing so only occurred to me just now, and it doesn't sound like a very good idea. However, if you're feeling more adventurous than I, and you decide to go try it, I'll be happy to link to you. If you try it, get tased by Officer Friendly for your efforts, and write a humorous or harrowing account of your adventure, I'd be delighted to link to you.

And if you actually live here for real, I can pretty much guarantee I'd link to you. Unless that would attract too much attention, I mean, since I do get visitors here from City Hall now and then. And in the larger scheme of things, a link from an obscure and obsessive little blog is probably not on the top ten (or hundred) list of things you really need, is it?

twilight, market street

fallen

Doughboy Monument, Astoria

A few old (2007-ish) photos of the "Doughboy Monument", the slightly odd World War I memorial out in Astoria, at the corner of Marine Drive & Columbia Avenue, just east of the Astoria-Megler Bridge. The slightly odd bit is the low building that forms the base of the statue. It doesn't seem to have any obvious purpose, but it does. Any guesses? No? Why, it's a public restroom, of course. Really, it is. It dates back to the 1920's, when there seems to have been a mania for adding public restrooms to various improbable things, like the Oregon City Bridge for instance. I've never seen a good explanation for this. Did people just drink a lot more water than they do today? Beats me.

Astoria, Oregon Daily Photo has a nice post about the monument, including the various inscriptions around it. Which is nice, since they're are too small to see in my photos. The author expands on that in "Astoria's Doughboy Monument: Finding an angle", in which she tries to figure out a good angle to shoot it from. Busy backgrounds in most directions, and wayyy too many overhead wires. I remember running into this problem too when I took the photos in this post, and thanks in advance for pretending you hadn't noticed.

Portland Public Art covers the doughboy here, calling it "dull and mechanical". Also a mention of it (and the sculptor's many similar works) at ~westr. (Scroll down to the "Soldier's Monument" bit.)

The statue on top is titled "Over the top at Cantigny", by the sculptor John Paulding. Cantigny is a small town in France, and the site of the first WWI battle involving US soldiers. The town now features a large memorial to US troops, and another smaller one outside of town. Among those who served at Cantigny was Col. Robert McCormick, later the right-wing owner of the Chicago Tribune. I mention this because he had a 500 acre estate outside Chicago (now a park), which he named "Cantigny". The battle also lent its name to an Army transport ship of the 1920's.

Triad, Laurelhurst Park

A few photos of "Triad", a modern (circa 1980) steel sculpture plunked down in the middle of Laurelhurst Park. I'm not sure it fits the site all that well, but taken on its own it's ok. It's about the right size, and doesn't overpower the landscape the way some do (*cough* rusting chunks *cough*). The Smithsonian art inventory page for it is here. Not a lot else about it on the 'tubes, although I ran across a photo + brief mention of it in a back issue of the Multnomah Bible College student newspaper.



I'm not totally sure of this, but it sounds like the sculptor later went on to be a co-owner of Portland's Papa Haydn restaurant.



I took these during the same expedition where I also took photos of a visiting heron, and various mostly infrared photos of the pond area. So that was a productive day. And even better, a sunny one, and I got a few IR and UV photos of the sculpture, for a little variety. I sure do miss the sun... I still almost remember what it looked like, vaguely...

Mysterious Milestone 5

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So now we've come to the last milestone that I know of, and it's a mysterious one. Like the "other" P7 I mentioned the other day, this one's located in Southwest Portland. It's on Spring Garden Road, between two houses, just east of the intersection with 17th Ave. South side of the street, between the first and second houses east of 17th. The Stark Street Mile Markers mini-blog makes no mention of it, and I only learned of it when I ran across photos of it on Flickr. Beyond that, I know nothing definite about it. It's a stone or possibly concrete post with the number 5 on it, that much is certain. I assume the "5" represents distance (though we don't know even that for a fact), and I assume that's distance in miles to somewhere, and I assume that somewhere is probably downtown Portland -- although there's no 'P' this time to indicate that. It's not clear what route they're measuring it along, though. The "5" is sort of near both Barbur/99W and Taylor's Ferry, and Capitol Highway isn't far to the west. But I don't know that any of them ever ran along this exact route. I could be wrong. I don't have a handy source of authoritative info on that. If there was somewhere on the net that had historical maps of the area at various times, that would be ideal. But if it exists, I haven't run across it yet.

The milestone is clearly of newer vintage than the others. It most closely resembles the mileposts on the Columbia River Highway, which went in circa 1914. Although they could easily be decades older or newer. So we don't know if it's on the same route as P7, and as with P7 we don't know whether this is its original location, or whether this is the original stone. If it's a stone, and it might not be.

While looking into Mysterious Milestone 5, I wandered off on a tangent for a while and learned far too much trivia and arcana about how state highways are named and numbered. And I still don't think I know enough to explain it properly. I was curious about Capitol Highway, which today is just a secondary road that winds its way rather aimlessly through the West Hills between Barbur (in the area of George Himes Park) and roughly PCC Sylvania. It was, we're told, the route of OR-99W before it was rerouted to its current location. So far so good, except that we haven't explained the "Capitol" in the name, since 99W doesn't go to Salem. Apparently the original full-length Capitol Highway branched off just before McMinnville, and headed due south to Salem via Dayton. This is present-day OR-221.

Or, if you prefer, "Salem-Dayton Highway No. 150". It turns out that state roads in Oregon often have two separate numbers, as Wikipedia valiantly tries to explain here. The numbers you normally encounter (like OR-99W, etc.) are route numbers, a system the state introduced in 1932 that semi-replaced the earlier highway numbers from 1917. Nobody uses the old numbers anymore except ODOT, and they use them internally for reasons I can't guess at. And I think I read somewhere that the numbers on road mile markers are based on highway mileage, not route mileage, leading to weird results when the two aren't coextensive. If you drive across the state on US 20, you will, I'm told, encounter "mile 1" no fewer than five times. In any case, in addition to being OR-99W, plus any local street name it happens to have, the same road is also "Pacific Highway West No. 1W". I saw a mention that Capitol Highway was once Highway #3, although at present that number belongs to "Oswego Highway No. 3", better known as OR-43 or Macadam, among other names (and present-day Capitol Highway isn't a state highway at all anymore.) In the same vein, I-405 is also "Stadium Freeway No. 61", parts of Boones Ferry Rd. and Hall Blvd. are "Beaverton-Tualatin Highway No. 141" (, and an obscure stretch of Marine Drive and N. Portland Road are, officially, "Swift Highway No. 120". The latter two were recently (2002) designated OR-141 and OR-120 respectively, although they haven't put up route signs for either one so far....

Um, how did I get off on this tangent again? We've covered how to get to the Capitol via the historical Capitol Highway, and I previously covered how to get to erstwhile Taylor's Ferry via the original route of Taylor's Ferry Road. As for Barbur, it was only built in 1933 (construction photo here), and prior to that it was the route of the Southern Pacific Westside Line. And all of this is very interesting and so forth, but I still have no idea how Spring Garden Rd. fits in. Unless maybe it just doesn't fit in.

autumnal & inedible (probably)

As seen on SW Ash St., in downtown Portland. I don't actually know what sort of tree these are on. My rusty Boy Scout tree identification skillz were pretty much 100% focused on commercially valuable conifers. Hey, it was the early 80's in the Pacific Northwest, and there was still an outside chance that might be a useful job skill someday, so that's what we learned. It may actually be some kind of ash tree, going by some of the photos I'm seeing on the net. Which would be appropriate, and a bit more detail-oriented than the city usually is.



In any event, free to chime in if you know what these are. I say that every so often, and I think I've gotten a response exactly once, plus one non-blog response on a Flickr photo page. Which suggests that the majority of this humble blog's Gentle Reader(s) are either A.) not avid botanists or B.) avid but unhelpful botanists. I'm going to go with option A, since that's what I prefer to believe.



I also don't know whether the fruit you see here is edible or not. I suspect it isn't, on the theory that the city will never knowingly put something out there that homeless people could subsist on, even if it doesn't taste very good. Or possibly I'm overly cynical about that.

Either way, I'm not going to go and suggest that anyone try eating these. Although if you do, strictly of your own free will, and the fruit doesn't kill you, and the pesticides and other assorted cooties also don't kill you, feel free to post a comment and describe what it tastes like. Because I admit I'm just a little curious, albeit not curious enough to try it myself.

Southwest Milestone P7

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Ok, so we finished up the last Stark St. Milestone a few days ago, but we aren't quite done with Milestone Madness just yet. In my post about the P7 on Stark St., I mentioned there was another P7 out on Capitol Highway in SW Portland. And this, o Gentle Reader(s), is that other P7. As you can sorta-see here, it's located right at the entrance to the Capitol Hill Library, just a couple of feet from the entrance curb cut. Park at the library and look for it. It's hard to miss, once you're looking for it and you know it's there.

The milestones on Stark follow an obvious pattern, and most of them still exist. This milestone seems to be the sole survivor of at least 7 heading SW out of downtown. So it's more mysterious than the Stark stones, and raises a few questions I can't answer right now:

• 7 miles(?) from where, along what route? Presumably it's in miles, presumably it's miles from downtown Portland, and presumably it follows the route of Hwy 99W to the SW of here, to the site of the actual Taylor's Ferry, and beyond. The route between downtown and here is less certain -- somehow or other it has to add up to 7 miles, so it's not as-the-crow-flies distance, since it seems to be just short of 5 miles in a straight line. Unless the stone is newer than it looks, the distance isn't likely to be along the current Hwy 99W / Barbur Blvd. route, since that was a railroad right of way until some time in the early-mid 20th century. I suspect it's measured along the route of old Taylor's Ferry road, following Macadam south out of town until the start of present-day Taylors Ferry Rd., just south of the Zupan's grocery store. And if I'm wrong about the route, I have no idea what the real route might be.
• I don't know for a fact whether this is the original milestone, or its original site. Could be both, could be neither. I suppose I could've gone inside and asked, since if anyone's likely to know about the milestone it would be someone with the library. But their open hours and my free hours don't mesh up very well, and I had to run off for an important meeting just as they were getting ready to open for the day.
• The existence of this milestone suggests that others existed, at least between here and downtown, and possibly between here and the old site of Taylor's Ferry. If so, what became of the others? Were they all lost to road-widening projects (which is distinctly possible, especially as we go further away from downtown)? Or do they still exist somewhere, awaiting discovery by intrepid urban explorers?
• As you can see, this P7 is in better shape than most of the ones on Stark. I don't know for a fact that it's the same age as the Stark milestones. It could be the same age but abused less, or it could be slightly newer, or it could be a modern reproduction, for all I know. I suppose I could call or email the library and ask about it, since it's the 21st century and all. They may even respond to tweets, or whatever it is that one does on Facebook, for all I know.

Just south of the library is Portland's new Holly Farm Park. I thought about visiting, and drove past and took a look, but I didn't stop. It's new, but it's just a neighborhood park, and it looks far more interesting from space than it does at street level. Oh, well.