city reflections

Our occasional tour of art on the Portland Transit Mall continues with "City Reflections", one of the new crop of sculptures that went in along with the recent MAX construction.

So, ok, it's shiny and whimsical and harlequinesque, and it includes a cute dog, and that's all great and everything. But it also looks strangely dated, like something you'd have seen in a trendy housewares store in 1996, on the shelf next to the gargoyles and the chile pepper margarita glasses.

On the the bright side, if you buy it when it already looks dated, it slides over into "retro" that much quicker, and then everyone's bound to love it and see it as a local icon. So there's that. I give it another 6-8 years, 10 tops.



Additional info from across the interwebs:

• The artist's website
• A profile
by the Seattle P-I.
• Smithsonian oral history
• An interview with the UW alumni magazine.
• Craft in America story

New Frontier / Las Vegas Plaza

View Larger Map

Just south of the Echelon site, across Desert Inn Road, is another huge vacant lot. This one was once home to the New Frontier casino, which was imploded to make way for a super-sized Vegas edition of New York's famous Plaza Hotel. No, seriously. This seemed like a fabulous idea during the real estate bubble years, but the dream never got off the drawing board. Now, instead of an aging, down-market -- but profitable -- casino, they've got a nice big patch of empty desert. Which reminds me of a certain famous poem.

Vermont Street Park Blocks

View Larger Map

Today's fun expedition takes us to Southwest Portland, in the area around SW 45th Avenue & Vermont Street. Given that intro you might assume we're headed to Gabriel Park, but we're not. Gabriel Park isn't quite obscure enough for this humble blog, I think. And besides, I saw quite enough of the place back in high school, mumble-mumble years ago, since our home cross country course was located there. Come to think of it, I haven't been back since. I doubt that nostalgia alone can trigger psychosomatic shin splints, but why risk it?

In any case, thanks to a very obscure document from the city, I ran across a much more obscure spot in the vicinity of Gabriel Park: A three block span of park blocks -- or more accurately, a very long and skinny single park block, about three blocks long -- runs along the north side of Vermont St. between SW Idaho Drive and 50th Avenue. Instead of separating east and westbound traffic, the south side has busy through traffic going both directions, and the north side is basically a residential side street, and both sides are named Vermont St. Maybe that was the plan all along. Or maybe Vermont Street was supposed to have a grassy center strip with trees the whole way, and the plan didn't pan out for some reason, and this is the only remnant of that design. So far I haven't found any explanation anywhere on the interwebs. Or for that matter any mention of the place at all other than that one list in the city archives.

PortlandMaps says it's not a tax lot, which usually means the city's transporation bureau owns the place, similar to most of the East Park Blocks. That's not always the same thing as who mows the grass and trims the trees. Which again, I've been unable to find any info at all about.

waikiki soft focus

bottlebrush

A bottlebrush plant ( genus Callistemon ).

banana tree

another mystery fruit

As before, I have no idea what sort of weird tropical plant this is.

palm (detail)

mystery fruit

When I first posted this I said:

I have no idea what sort of fruit this is. My plant ID skills are pretty bad at the best of times, and I don't exactly improve while visiting unfamiliar tropical locales.

If you know what we're looking at here, please feel free to leave a comment.

The mystery is solved now, thanks to yus_prinandy on Flickr. This is a noni fruit (Morinda citrifolia). They aren't supposed to be very tasty in this form, and they're said to be rather stinky (although I didn't notice that part). Despite that, it's a traditional medicinal plant, and the University of Hawaii's College of Tropical Agriculture has a site full of info on growing them.

papaya tree

A papaya tree at the Honolulu Zoo. It's a rather odd-looking plant that is apparently not a real tree, technically speaking, and has a whole genus ( Carica ) all to itself.

night, las vegas strip

old motel, las vegas strip

The abandoned White Sands Motel, across the street from the Luxor. This page about old Vegas motels has a vintage photo for comparison. More info on the White Sands and other vintage Vegas motels here.

TR, October 2010

red crested cardinal, kapiolani park

A red-crested cardinal in Honolulu's Kapiolani Park. They're native to South America and were introduced to the Hawaiian islands around 1930. I haven't found any info on why they were imported originally. As far as I know they're strictly decorative; they aren't edible and they don't control agricultural pests. So maybe they escaped someone's aviary or something along those lines. In any case, they're kind of cute and they seem to be everywhere.

waikiki jellies

Jellyfish at the Waikiki Aquarium. As always, I forgot to note the exact species shown in either video clip, which sort of limits the educational value here. And I could probably have gotten better clips if I'd filmed them with something other than a Blackberry, for instance if my DSLR took video, which it doesn't. And I'm sure they'd be much more relaxing if I added a gentle New-Agey piano soundtrack or something, if I knew anyone who made that sort of music, which I don't. But hey.

twilight, waikiki