droplets (i)

Raindrops on a gray January afternoon. Lens: vintage preset Takumar 135/3.5 @f/3.5, made circa 1957. Lots of info about early Pentax lenses (with photos) here, if you're interested...

Wistaria & 41st

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So here's another whistlestop on the Great Alameda Photo Freakout of '09, this time the landscaped nano-parklet at NE 41st & Wistaria. Ok, "whistlestop" is an exaggeration, since I didn't actually stop As with the others, I just sort of rolled by and snapped a handful of photos as best I could. Sure, I could've taken better photos, but I would have had to take the other hand off the steering wheel and probably run over some pedestrians or something, which I'm generally opposed to, unless maybe it was Pat Robertson, and I was driving a rental car. And even then it would be a bad idea; I've heard that car rental companies really ding you for body damage caused by caustic demon guts.

So I've only got two photos this time, and basically no material to go along with them. I kind of figured there's be no material at all, actually. But it turns out that during last December's mini-snowpocalypse, a brave passerby shot some video of cars and buses struggling to get up the hill. The angle's a little different than mine and it's hard to place where the viewer who filmed this was standing. Still, I figured I'd pass it along, because watching Portlanders try to drive in snow is always good for a laugh.

Of course the classic of the genre is still "Snow Driving Fail", from the big snowstorm in January '07. It's kinda like air hockey, but on a hill, with SUVs. Hee-larious. Unless you're an insurance company, I guess.

Wistaria & 49th

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More photos from the (Not Very) Great Alameda Photo Freakout of '09. Said event being the morning I tracked down the Vernon Ross Veterans Memorial and the nano-parklet at Alameda & 38th, and assorted other spots nobody but me cares about. Well, me and a few loyal Gentle Readers, plus the occasional Google hit that's often the result of someone searching on an unrelated topic -- and typically they don't stay long. I kind of enjoy tracking down really obscure places and things around town, but the downside is that pretty much by definition I don't get a flood of visitors searching for the things I cover. Which is fine, I mean, if it really bothered me I'd stop and do something else.

Still, this is one of those times when I stop and wring my hands and wonder aloud just how far down this particular rabbit hole I intend to go. The "park" at Wistaria & 49th shows up alongside the aforementioned two places in an obscure city document I keep linking to. But it's not really much of a park, is it? It's a steep, narrow, unbuildable strip of land, the result of the city street grid bonking up against the side of the Alameda Ridge. There isn't even a decaying statue of a forgotten politician to hold our interest here. So I'm starting to wonder if I've wandered off the far side of esoteric into... whatever's over there, I'm not sure what that would be. One of these days, I'll be taking third rate photos of some nondescript weedy highway median somewhere, and a white van full of anorak-clad British trainspotters will drive by, and they'll laugh at me and call me a nerd. And it's not like I'll be in a position to argue with them.

There is one point of interest here, which you can see in the top photo. The Alameda area is home to a fair number of public stairs, and one of these staircases forms the short side of the park here. I was doing a public stairs project a while back, until I ran out of examples that I knew the location of. Not knowing Alameda very well, I never covered anything in this part of town. I really ought to have stopped and taken a few shots of just the stairs while I was here, but I'd forgotten all about the old stairs project. I suppose I could go back and take care of that at some point. Which sounds kind of silly, but I'm not going to absolutely rule it out.

The stairs appear on a couple of walking maps, and they point out a number of the other staircases in the area. So I could probably ramp the stairs project back up again if I was so inclined. I can't absolutely rule that out either.

So to address the rabbit hole question: The answer is this far, and a little further. There are two more stops left on the Great Photo Freakout after this one, and they don't even have stairs to make them, uh, interesting.

In my defense, I do have a few posts about actual interesting places and things lying around in my drafts folder. But the boring places are low hanging fruit. The fact that there's nothing much here makes the research part really easy. So I guess it's got that going for it, at least.

multimorphic chunks

Ok, so here's a silly experiment I've wanted to try for a while. Over the years I've picked up a variety of thrift store photo doodads of widely varying usefulness, including a few now deeply unfashionable doodads from the groovy 70's. Among the uber-grooviest are a couple of multiple image filters I sorta-overpaid for about a year ago. I posted some photos of "Rusting Chunks #5" with one of them around that time, and warned that I might be posting "more multiple image pics here than strictly necessary". Turns out I haven't actually posted any more since then. Although as of this post I've done it twice, and that may still count as more than strictly necessary.

That time I used the Mirage 5F, this time it's the Mirage 3FP, so it's three images in a row instead of five arrayed in a circle. The effect isn't quite as dramatic as with the 5F, so for most of these pics I broke out a second widget, the Optivision anamorphic lens previously seen in this batch of cat photos.

And what better (or more convenient) subject for 70's-style photos than our old friend the Rusting Chunks? I couldn't think of a better subject, and as it turns out there aren't very many things that easily lend themselves to the multiple-image and/or the anamorphic gimmicks. And it's not for lack of looking. It's worth noting that the multiple image fad died out around the photo world started moving to zoom lenses, in place of the ~50mm prime lenses that had been the standard up until then (in the 35mm film world, I mean). A multiple image filter doesn't zoom with the lens, and pretty much only works as designed at focal lengths around 50mm, or the crop-sensor equivalent (and then not quite as well). Go longer, and you quickly lose the side images, so the filter becomes sort of pointless. Go wider, and the filter vignettes badly due to the thick rim of the filter.



It's easy to imagine someone taking photos just like these circa 1978. I can see it now. He was probably some sweaty chauvinist-pig type named Stan or Marv or something, who always wore a shiny brown leisure suit, a gold medallion, and cologne by the gallon. He'd heard that chicks really dug photographers, and besides photo gear was the latest trendy form of conspicuous consumption. He picked up a couple of multiple image filters thinking they'd help him take hip, with-it, happening pictures. When a woman fell for his cheesy pickup lines down at the singles bar, he'd invite her back to his place to check out his slides and perhaps have a glass of Riunite on ice and possibly fire up some romantic disco tunes on the ol' 8 Track. Having served their purpose, the multiple image filters went back in a drawer and sat unused for 30 years. And now they're mine, mwhahahah....



Speaking of Riunite on ice, we were messing around on YouTube a while back and ran into a bunch of vintage Riunite commercials, with that damn jingle you can't get out of your head. I think I like the skiing one the best of the bunch, although it's a tough call. Anyway, that naturally led to "whatever happened to", and the surprising discovery that it still exists. In fact, you can even be Riunite's friend on Twitter. Which led to, I wonder if it's available here in Portland. Not long after that, I found it and bought some. The Zupan's on Macadam has it, on the bottom shelf in the sparkling wine section, in case you're so inclined. A great thing about Riunite commercials is that, along with the music and happy 70's people, you also get food pairings. Ok, pairings with 70's food. The skiing commercial suggests fondue, so we thought we'd try that. And... it was actually nice. We liked it. Ok, it's kind of sweet, and lightly fizzy, and that's something that Modern Wine Experts regard with the very deepest disdain. But it would be nice on a hot day, as an alternative to beer or soda, assuming the weather ever improves. And if the weather doesn't improve, it also pairs nicely with chicken fried steak (which we verified with bottle #2).

Lest you take me for a complete barbarian, the quest for Riunite led me to take a good look at the sparkling wine aisle, something I don't typically do. So I thought, this year I'll do something different and get some proper from-Champagne champagne for New Years. So the Taittinger was kind of fabulous, and right now I have a bottle of something else in the fridge, and I'm looking for a flimsy excuse to pop the cork.

And all of this started with messing around aimlessly on YouTube. O, how I love thee, interwebs...

"The Responsibility of Raising a Child"

Today's episode of "Weird Transit Mall Art" takes us to the corner of SW 5th & Taylor, right outside the escalators to the Pioneer Place food court. As part of the MAX Green Line project, this spot is now home to the peculiar object you see here, inscrutably titled "The Responsibility of Raising a Child" (the full title is the equally inscrutable "From the Mad River to the Little Salmon River - or The Responsibility of Raising a Child"). Whatever the name, it's by Rick Bartow, a local Native America artist. Yes, that's a Wikipedia article. For more about him, along with photos of various other works:

• Froelick Gallery profile
• Art Scatter: "Grace, Falling Like Rain: Rick Bartow, the original story"
• harbinger Northwest profile
• Examiner: "Drawing Myself Straight"

Apparently there are ten copies of this piece out there, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian owns one of them. That one appeared at the NMAI's Heye Center branch in New York City in 2006, and the New York Times review of the show singled it out as something they didn't care for:

The only jarring note is a bronze sculpture, a vertical pileup of elements from traditional native stories, made in 2005 by Rick Bartow of the Wiyot tribe in Northern California and titled “From the Mad River to the Little Salmon River, or the Responsibility of Raising a Child.” It stands at the entrance to the new pavilion, but it’s not up to what’s inside.

I'm not really trying to bash the thing here, but "jarring" is a rather apt description. You're walking along, minding your own business, and suddenly here's this mass of faces and skulls and contorted birds and animals and whatnot. I understand it's supposed to be the artist's very personal twist on various Northwest tribal themes. I get that, I really do. But I only know that because I saw it, went "WTF!?", and searched the interwebs to figure out what on earth it was supposed to be. I think it would be fair to assume that most people who see it will just stop at the "WTF!?" part.

If you saw it and then looked at the title, you might reasonably assume it's supposed to be a comment on, well, raising children. And from the look of it, the message would seem to be that having children is really freakin' nightmarish. You might also assume, fairly, that it's located where it is as a stern warning to randy mall-going teens. But I'm reasonably certain that's not what it's supposed to be about. I think. Although I've been wrong before.

The reason it's here on our transit mall becomes apparent when you notice the salmon. Look closer, it's wrapped around the coffee mug on the dog-creature's back. A while back, I drew attention to our fair city's Law of Salmon, whereby the Powers That Be will buy just about anything so long as it comes with a salmon attached. I think the idea here is that salmon show how amazingly special we are because they're a uniquely Northwestern fish, um, except for those on the East Coast and in much of Europe and East Asia. We're also supposed to learn all sorts of important life lessons from salmon, apparently, and put them into practice in our own lives. But I've never been clear on what these lessons are supposed to be. I guess it's something along the lines of "You're forever tied to your stream of origin, and it's better to be pureed by a dam than look for a different stream", or "Your sole goal in life should be to spawn once with an anonymous stranger and then drop dead." So this life lesson thing isn't really working for me, I have to say. In short, the Law of Salmon isn't a very good law. But certain things (like the subject of this post) make a lot more sense once you know the law exists.

New York, New York, Las Vegas

Photos of the New York, New York casino in Las Vegas. It's a nice, clean, safe, sanitized, family-friendly cartoon version of New York City. In other words, it's just like the real 21st Century New York, according to certain longtime (and thus cynical) New Yorkers.

snow day, hawthorne bridge

untitled (5th & ankeny)

Our sorta-ongoing tour of Portland transit mall art takes us to SW 5th between Pine and Ankeny, home to this piece known merely as "Untitled". As its Smithsonian art inventory page explains, it's by John Killmaster (a now-retired prof at Boise State University. You know, in Idaho ), and was part of the original 1977 crop of transit mall sculptures. And it's not to be confused with another piece of the same vintage also (un)titled "Untitled" just one block south of here.



So it's been in Portland about as long as I have, and over the years I've walked past it a vast untold number of times without ever once stopping to take a good look at it. One thing I enjoy about doing this blog is that it makes me pause and take notice of my surroundings, at least more than I otherwise would. And every so often, I bump into something and decide I actually like it. This is one of those times. Longtime readers may find this surprising, recalling (as you no doubt do) my irrational and negative views on the subject of rust. If you owned an MG, you'd understand. Just trust me on this. Anyway, "Untitled" is basically a trio of brightly colored decorative enamel panels, each mounted on a big chunk of rusty ol' Cor-Ten steel. So until recently my reaction to the thing as a whole was basically "eew, gross", until I finally took a look at the enamel bits and decided I like those. So my take is that the multicolored panels are the art, and the rusty parts are simply a stand for the art, which can be freely ignored. That's probably not the original intent, but I like it better this way.



We may never know why the 70's were so mad for deliberately rusty steel. The 70's had an equally inexplicable mania for the color brown, so it might just be that. Or possibly it was a sort of misguided back-to-nature impulse, the rust indicating that the modern world was ending, and we were all heading back to a post-technological Woodstock-like barefoot-in-the-mud existence. Which was desirable, apparently. Or maybe it was simply that it was the 70's, and everyone else was doing it, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. This theory is called upon to explain much of the 70's, and is nearly impossible to disprove. So there's that. But personally I lean toward the Art Mafia hypothesis. Perhaps you're unfamilar with the Art Mafia. They generally like to keep it that way. But if so-and-so's Cousin Guido goes into the scrap metal business, it's best to avail yourself of his services, if you know what's good for you. Otherwise, an Art Mob enforcer cuts off his own ear and mails it to you, just to show that they mean business. That's just a warning, and after that they play rough with you. After the first time, you look like a Munch. After the second, you look like a Picasso. And after the third, a Pollock. So really it's best to just knuckle under and buy the damn rusty steel, already.



But I digress. The enamel panels themselves are quite pleasant, sporting bright primary colors and tiled in parts with various Northwest-esque nature motifs. So, ok, they do look just a little like 70's prog rock album covers, and overall there's just no mistaking Untitled for one of the new 2009 pieces they added during the MAX project. Regardless, I really do like it, and I'm not trying to be snarky or ironic or anything here.



I generally try to look up other works by the same artist, to (hopefully) get a feel for their style and (possibly) get some idea of what motivates them. And I do have a few examples to pass along, but nothing that looks very similar to this. In a 1989 article, Killmaster explains in great detail how a recent enamel piece was created, and includes photos of a couple of other contemporary pieces. More recently, here are articles about 2004 and 2009 shows of his paintings at a Boise-area gallery, and you can see a few more paintings at this online gallery. The Smithsonian inventory page I linked to earlier mentions a couple of other public art works of his, but I haven't been able to find photos of either, so I don't know if they're similar to this or not.

more xbm bridges

A few more bridge photos, xbm-ogrified for your enjoyment. Enjoy!

Top photo: 82nd Drive Bridge on the Clackamas River.




The famous Astoria-Megler Bridge




The far less famous Wilsonville Railroad Bridge




The McLoughlin Bridge, again over the Clackamas River.




The Lake Oswego Railroad Bridge.




And finally another Clackamas River bridge, the long-abandoned Portland Avenue Bridge.