Lents Grown Story Yard

A couple of recent posts have looked at elements of the city's ongoing "redevelopment" (i.e. gentrification) effort in Portland's Lents neighborhood, centered on SE Foster just west of I-205. So far they haven't had a lot of success attracting actual new construction to the area, but they've spent a fair bit of PDC development money creating plazas and monuments and whatnot, in the hope that a new Pearl District might someday arise way out here. You might have inferred from my tone that I'm not entirely convinced this is either likely or desirable. But in all the time I've had this humble blog, the city has never once asked my opinion (or the opinion of any other random pseudonymous internet person, for that matter) before building something, and I doubt they're going to start now.

Anyway, after the initial phase of the project, the city ended up owning various bits and pieces of vacant land around central Lents, to be sold off to developers at whatever point developers take an interest in the area. Leaving them as empty lots for now wouldn't really create a sense of impending prosperity, so it was time to get creative. In August 2014, this parcel at SE 88th & Foster became Lents Grown Story Yard, a temporary art installation featuring odd wire-and-rocks outdoor furniture and large photos of local business owners. The PDC press release for the grand opening explains this is a temporary use of the land, paid for with rather small PDC and Arts Tax grants. This is basically the same model they used successfully with the former Block 47 mini-park at NE Holladay & MLK, across from the Convention Center. I've forgotten exactly what replaced the old mini-park, but the whole area north of the Convention Center has sprouted swanky new apartment buildings in the last couple of years, so it's probably part of one of those now.

Sorry about the picture quality, by the way. Everything I know about this place came from googling it after the fact; I didn't know it was there before going, and didn't realize what it was when I was visiting. While tracking down the weird "Retail Birthplace of U-Haul" marker across the street, I saw what looked like weird boxes of rocks across the street and took a couple of photos out of curiosity. If I'd known it was Art, I would have crossed the street for a better look.

Mirador Community Store mural

Next mural up is this design outside the Mirador Community Store on SE Division, created in 2002 by artist Gwyllm Llywdd. You don't see a lot of circa-2002 murals as this was right in the middle of the city's mural wars. The semi-short version: City sorta-welcomes murals, but frowns on billboards. Malevolent out-of-town billboard conglomerate sues, arguing that treating the two differently violates the state constitution's free speech provisions, which are even more generous than the federal First Amendment. Billboard company wins. City decides it's better to regulate murals like billboards than vice versa. New rules are very strict, with the city fining violators and sometimes sending crews to paint over unauthorized murals, for fear of being hauled back into court for selective nonenforcement. Artists hate this. Everyone hates this. Eventually the city finds better lawyers, who come up with some creative legal dodges, and a permit system that theoretically allows advertising too, if it has enough artistic merit, though off the top of my head I can't think of any examples of this actually happening.

The mural you see here was rather controversial back then. Not because of the subject matter, but because it was just too big. City rules specified the maximum size for a sign in this area was 50 square feet, and murals were now considered signs, and this one was at least 3x that large. So the city ordered the store to paint over it or be fined $50/day. After some wrangling the store gave in, sort of, and nailed plywood over parts of the mural, just enough to get it down to the allowed 50 square feet. It stayed that way for another five years, until the new city mural program kicked in, and it was finally safe to take the plywood down.

(As a small counterpoint, the anonymous "Art Wall of Shame" Tumblr really hated this mural, with a tiny bit of semi-praise: "It’s very Portland. The greenery, the essence of Hippie-ism, the rolling hills." before diving into the full rant.)

Third Eye murals

Various groovy murals outside the Third Eye head shop on SE Hawthorne. One of them's signed "vicky" with an email address I didn't quite catch, but that's all the info I've got. If you search the intergoogles for "Third Eye", "hawthorne", and "mural", the top hit is the photoset you're looking at here. That basically always means the thing you're really looking for does not exist online. Oh well. I mean, I suppose I could have gone in and, y'know, asked, but that's never really been my style.

Prefontaine Mural, NW Davis

Next mural on our ongoing adventure is at NW Park & Davis, where a mural of Steve Prefontaine (the late distance runner and local mythological figure) graces the Portland office of the marketing firm IDL Worldwide (the building's also home to the "Working/Playing" neon sign you might have noticed.). The mural's labeled with the office's official hashtag, which is a thing that would of course exist, and it bears an illegible signature.

This post initially had a whole additional paragraph going on about the Prefontaine myth slash marketing phenomenon, but I read over it and concluded that as a rather, um, occasional runner, it's not my mythology, I don't get it, and honestly I don't care all that much. I will grant, however, that this Prefontaine is better than the one at the Cheerful Tortoise near PSU. So there's that.

Burnside Brewing mural

The next mural we're visiting is outside Burnside Brewing, on the NE 7th side of the building. Apparently the mural predates the brewery; it's signed by Brazilian artist Herbert Baglione, & dated 2006, while Burnside Brewing was founded in 2010. It featured in a 2009 Mercury story about edgy local murals, again before the brewery started up. A web address on the mural mentions hipster retail chain Upper Playground, so maybe they used to have a store here (that was a decade ago & I honestly don't recall), or maybe it was just an ad for a store elsewhere, I dunno.

Papaccino's mural

A neighborhood-themed mural outside the Papaccinos's coffee place at SE 44th & Woodstock, created in 2015 by artist Michael Burge Smith.

City Bikes workshop mural

Mural/design on a workshop building at City Bikes on SE Ankeny, between the main mural and the more recent one on an annex building.

City Bikes Annex mural

A 2013 Ashley Montague mural at City Bikes on SE Ankeny, much more skeleton-y than the mural on their main building nearby.

Stoll Plaza

Ok, I accidentally deleted a blog post just now, for the first time ever. I posted it, then it looked like I had a copy in Drafts as well as a published one (which is a bug I've seen a lot lately with Blogger), so I deleted the "Draft" one, and the published one vanished too. Luckily it wasn't a very long blog post, and I think I can recreate it, more or less.

So the post was about Stoll Plaza, a sorta-park in the Hollywood District. The park was created out of a former stretch of NE 41st between Broadway & Sandy, just west of the historic Hollywood Theater; when the adjacent blocks were redeveloped, it was convenient to close the very short bit of 41st here, as the city didn't think it was needed for traffic purposes. But there was a utility easement down the middle, so it couldn't be built upon, so a shiny new public plaza was born. It's named after local boosters (and dance studio owners) Norm & Helen Stoll, & was dedicated in 2013 (gaining the inevitable skateboard stops in 2014). This is the latest in a number of odd public spaces caused by diagonal NE Sandy cutting through the Portland street grid, resulting in too-small city blocks here, and too-short city streets there. Harold Kelley Plaza (a former too-short street, named for another local booster), and Vernon Ross Veterans Memorial (the city's smallest legal city block, supposedly) are two examples just within the Hollywood District.

Alberta Street Crossing

Next up we're visiting Alberta Street Crossing, a pair of murals on NE Alberta Ct. on either side of 42nd Avenue. These were created in 2011 by artist Loey Hargrove, with a grant from the RACC (the local public arts agency). I was going to snark and be pedantic about the title saying "Alberta Street" when it's really on Alberta Ct. But I noticed my original notes from whenever I saved this draft post said "Note ct. not st., to be pedantic about it.", and I'm kind of inclined to play against type for once. So really, who cares? It still says "Alberta", after all. Close enough.

Alberta Who's Who

The next mural we're visiting is on NE Alberta, facing the alley between 29th & 30th avenues. An old Neighborhood Notes post calls it "Alberta Who's Who" (or I think it does, or did; the site seems to be down at the moment). The mural doesn't list any names, but I gather this is a diverse assortment of prominent people from around the neighborhood. Call me a non-Alberta resident if you like -- and you'd be correct -- but I have no idea who any of these people are.

Richmond School mosaics

Next up, we're visiting the animal & nature mosaics outside Richmond Elementary in SE Portland, at 41st & Grant Ct. These were created in 2008-09 by artist Lynn Takata, along with students from the school's Japanese language immersion program.

Mark Hatfield bust, OHSU

At one entrance to the main OHSU hospital building is this bust of Oregon's late Senator Mark Hatfield, who represented the state in Congress from 1967-1997. He was possibly one of the last decent and humane Republicans around, although I voted against him the one time he was on the ballot & I was old enough to vote, because he was still a Republican. As a senator with a great deal of seniority, he was also quite generous with those old-style earmarks, and OHSU was one of his favorite beneficiaries over the years, and a great many places and things around the campus are named in his honor. An old Portland Public Art post says this is one of at least two depictions of the august senator, and the frieze somewhere near the main lobby is a better likeness, but I don't know where that one is & have no photos of it, so this one will have to do.

I don't know who created this bust; it's bound to have been someone very well reputed, as Hatfield's wife owned an art gallery for many years, and knew absolutely everyone. I didn't see a signature on the front, and its shrine-like niche sort of discourages one from looking at the back of it for a signature, as if from that angle you'd discover he was a mostly-benevolent space alien the whole time, and then the guards would have to dispose of you. Possibly that's not exactly what would happen, but that's the general sense I got.

Avalon Sanctuary

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The next sorta-park we're visiting is on SE 19th Ave. where it dead ends just south of SE Division. The city acquired the land for the street back in 1909 but never quite got around to completing it, so it just sort of sat vacant for a century or so. The local neighborhood association got the idea that it might be a good place for a small park, so they worked things out with the city and "Avalon Sanctuary" was born. The name sounds like some sort of crystals-and-dolphins thing, and it's certainly the sort of neighborhood where that might happen, but it turns out this bit of 19th Ave. was originally called Avalon St. until the Great Street Renaming of 1933. The renaming fixed the previous bizarre and chaotic address system, and created a lot of temporary jobs in the middle of the Depression, but we did lose a few pleasant street names in the process.

Wistaria & Alameda/Beaumont Stairs

Ok, in the previous post I mentioned something about having another public stairs post floating around in Drafts. So this is that other post, and the stairs we're visiting connect NE Wistaria Drive on the lower end, and Alameda St. on the upper end, 3 fancy rich-person houses east of where it becomes Beaumont St. I put "Beaumont" in the title because there's another set of stairs between Wistaria & Alameda a couple of blocks east of here, and in theory they might show up here someday, and if that ever happens I'll need a way to disambiguate the two.

Embedded maps usually aren't very useful on stairs posts, since you can't really see them very well. I put one here since you can sort of make out where the stairs are, thanks to the hedges that run alongside it.

NW 25th Pl. / Barker Ave. Stairs

One of the ongoing projects I haven't revisited in a while involves tracking down public stairs here and there around the city. In fact the last stairs post was back in January 2010, though this post and another one have been floating around in Drafts for a good while, so it's not like I've been completely neglecting this particular project. So the stairs we're looking at this time are in NW Portland, connecting NW 25th Place on the lower side & NW Barker Ave. on the upper side. The stairs are weirdly grandiose for something that connects two quiet dead-end residential streets, and I wish I knew why. These stairs are in a weird corner of NW Portland and aren't among the city's better-known stairs (I seem to recall I just stumbled across them without knowing they were there), and I don't see many other mentions of it across the interwebs. It does show up on one tour of stairways in the area, weirdly enough on a cycling website. Maybe it's there for the hardcore cyclocross nuts, people who want to run up & down all these stairways while lugging a bike, while it's raining or (hopefully) hailing, and maybe wolves or velociraptors are chasing you or something.

Base Camp Brewing mural

Here are a few photos of the mural outside Base Camp Brewing, on SE Oak between 9th & 10th. I don't know who created this one, which is the big reason this post's been sitting around in Drafts for a long time. The top Google hit for "base camp brewing" + mural is one of my photos in the Flickr photoset above, which is usually a big clue there's nothing out there on the interwebs about it. About the only other mention I see of it is in a very enthusiastic beer blog post about the brewery. Which is convenient since I'm not really in the beer blogging business (despite being a bit of an enthusiast), and you can read alllll about the brewery that way. But since you asked (and you totally did), Base Camp isn't bad, though I usually end up at Hair of the Dog instead if I'm in the area.

goose mural, 25th ave., vancouver, wa

The next mural we're peeking at is up in Vancouver (the midsized Washington one, not the big Canada one), on 25th Ave & the alley between Main St. & Broadway. I don't know anything about it, but I see it now & then during allergy season, since the 'Couve is the land of non-prescripton Sudafed, and the Walgreens across the street is the closest pharmacy to the Interstate Bridge. Note for non-Oregonians: Our local state legislature has determined that we're uniquely unable to handle our Sudafed, and requires us to get a non-renewable prescription from a doctor for something you can buy at a pharmacy counter everywhere else, to keep us all from turning into depraved meth fiends. They haven't yet figured out how to prevent you from just crossing the river and buying it there like normal human beings do. And while you're over there, you can go for the 'Couve trifecta and buy some tequila at a grocery store and then pump your own gas, a couple of other things the State of Oregon feels its citizenry can't handle. Granted, on your way back home you can wave at all the 'Couve residents coming home from a day of sales tax-free shopping on the Oregon side of the river. So, potato, potahto, I guess.

Harbor View Property

The usual practice when I do a Portland city park post involves visiting, taking a few photos, and trying to find something to write about the place. This particular time, we're going to settle for a few photos from a distance; the euphemistically-named Harbor View Property is a chunk of abandoned industrial land next to the 5.1 railroad bridge, just downstream from the McCormick & Baxter Creosote Superfund site. Apparently the city's owned it since 1970, and hasn't figured out anything useful to do with the place all this time. If you look closely, you might see an intersection where Van Houten Ave. crosses the railroad tracks; the city-owned parcel is to the left of the tracks, and this side of the intersection. I understand there are ways to get in if you're really determined, but to be honest I really just didn't want to. The abandoned buildings in the background weren't a big draw for me either, and I understand they've been demolished & replaced by a parking lot since I took these photos. Besides, I draw a firm line at "Superfund", and I'm not even sorry.

Lents Town Center monuments

In a recent post I mentioned something about the big new monument doodads the city installed along SE Foster to let visitors know they'd arrived at the fabled Lents Town Center, with upscale housing and amenities to be built Real Soon Now. So here's one of the two monuments in all its glory, in case anyone was curious.

As a side note, one of this humble blog's more esoteric projects involves tracking down some obscure places from an old Parks Bureau list from the early 90s, places they'd had something to do with in the last couple of decades but generally didn't own. One of the items on the list was "Foster Woodstock Couplets", which is here, or technically was a previous incarnation of here, prior to the big monuments and so forth. I think the earlier effort was strictly for traffic flow, making Foster & Woodstock a pair of one way streets through central downtown Lents, such as it was/is. Still, I'm going to check that item off the list now, since I don't see how else it gets checked off, and checking it off is important because of reasons.