Christmas ships, out there somewhere

Here's a low-quality video clip of Christmas ships passing under the Hawthorne Bridge, which illustrates some limitations of the iPod Nano's video camera. The main thing is that there's no zoom, so the ships are just tiny specks in the distance. And it doesn't seem to handle low light too well, either. But hey, the iPod was free, so I'm not really complaining.

Hawthorne Milestone P2 (?!)

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I don't get a lot of reader suggestions here at this humble blog. And when I do, I don't always follow up on them in anything resembling a timely manner, if I get around to them at all. But just yesterday morning, a keen-eyed Gentle Reader pointed out a possible milestone sighting that I just had to check out:

To go back to the milepost saga, I was on a walk last night and noticed a milepost-looking stone embedded in the parking strip on SE 23rd, just south of Hawthorne behind Grand Central Bakery. Looks like the top of it might be broken off. I wonder if it's one of the missing stones, relocated? Haven't had a chance to investigate further, though

That sounded intriguing, and I had a spare hour to burn, so despite the awful weather I set out for the corner of 23rd & Hawthorne. There I found the stubby, off-kilter, moss-encrusted stone you see here.



As a sign of my very, uh, selective powers of observation, I've been to the adjacent Grand Central Baking a couple of times in the last month or so, and I'm certain I walked right past the stone here without noticing it. This was after the recent milestone project, and I think I was even chatting to someone about said project on a recent stop here. But I wasn't looking for milestones at the time, so the thing just didn't register.

Now, in my defense, everyone knows the milestones are on Stark St., some blocks north of here, and not on Hawthorne. Also, the stone here looks similar but not quite identical to the the Stark St. stones. And it's not like it has a big neon sign attached. Although sometimes I wonder whether I'd miss that as well, if I wasn't specifically looking for neon signs.



In any case, I'm not entirely sure what we're looking at here. It was pouring rain on me at the time, so I didn't go over it as meticulously as I could have looking for any signs of writing. There are marks here and there that look deliberately chiseled, but I couldn't really tell if they're supposed to say anything or not. Maybe it would help to peel some of the moss off of it, but I'm not sure you're supposed to do that if it's a protected historical object, which it may or may not be.

I see 3 basic possibilities here:

1. It's something else entirely, and merely bears a striking resemblance to a milestone. Possibly a bit of historical research would dig up what sort of structures have been here over the years. I do know that across the street, where the outdoor produce market currently stands, there was a gas station at one time. And before the real estate bubble burst, there was a monstrous 50 unit upscale condo project slated for the site. On this side of the street, I dunno. It's been a Grand Central as long as I can remember. Which, I'll have you know, is really not that long at all, historically speaking. Maybe we're seeing the base of a column of a long-lost building, or the base of an old lamppost, or the only remaining piece of Hawthorne Stonehenge, or who knows what.
   
2. As suggested above, it's a rescued milestone from elsewhere, either Stark St., Capitol Highway, St. Helens Road, or somewhere else entirely. If there was a readable inscription on the stone, that could help prove this hypothesis. But it would raise another question: Why here? It's in an obscure spot down a narrow side street, at the back of a commercial building, without any sign or marker explaining what it is. The crazy tilt of the stone seems to argue against the rescue theory. It just really looks like it's been at this spot, unmaintained, for a very long time. It also looks wider than the Stark St. stones, and seems to be more trapezoidal than square, so if it's a refugee, my guess is that it's from somewhere other than Stark.
   
3. Which leads me to an even more intriguing possibility: What if this is a survivor, perhaps the sole survivor, of a series of Hawthorne milestones parallel to those on Stark? The key argument in favor here is the location. It seems like an obscure and nondescript little place, but 23rd Avenue places it exactly due south of Stark St. Milestone P2. P2, as you might recall, is in the 2300 block of Stark, embedded in the north wall of the Lone Fir Cemetery, and it signifies being two miles from a point in downtown Portland somewhere near the Galleria MAX stop. If this is a 2-mile marker, technically it would be two miles from a different "P0" point parallel to and south of the original. My rough guesstimate would place this point somewhere in the area of Keller Fountain, more or less. I could be wrong.
   
   In any case, for now and for lack of a better name I'm going to refer to the rock here as "Hawthorne Milestone P2", since it does actually mark distance, whether that was the original intent behind it or not.
   

So, assuming we've got one milestone on Hawthorne due south of one on Stark, the obvious question is are there any others out there? I haven't gone searching in person (so far), but based on a little poking around in Google Street View I don't think there are.

• P1 would be around MLK & Hawthorne, but Hawthorne is still on the bridge viaduct at that point. So it would either be on the Hawthorne Bridge, or under it, or stuck somewhere in the freeway-style interchange with MLK.
  
  
• P2 is what you see here.
  
  
• P3 would be around 42nd & Hawthorne, but I don't see any sign of it. It's a shame. There's an antique store next door where I bought an old camera a while back. It would seem sort of fitting to put a roll of film in it and take some pics of the milestone nearby, if it existed.
  
  
• P4 would be at about 61st & Hawthorne, which is to say it would be at the bottom of Reservoir #6 at Mt. Tabor. Hawthorne has sort of petered out at this point, although it picks up on the other side of Mt. Tabor.
  
  
• P5 would be around 78th & Hawthorne, but it's not there either. Although Hawthorne continues again east of Mt. Tabor, it's just a quiet residential street at this point, and unlike Stark it only continues in fits and starts.
  
  
• P6 would be at 98th & Hawthorne, if that intersection existed, but it doesn't. Instead, the P6 point is somewhere on the campus of Portland Adventist Academy, just east of I-205.
  
  
• P7, 117th & Hawthorne: The intersection exists, with another stretch of Hawthorne ending at 117th. It's a little residential street here, again with no sign of any milestones.
  
  
• P8, 138th & Hawthorne: No Hawthorne here, where "here" is just east of David Douglas High School.
  
  
• P9, 158th & Hawthorne: There's a short one block stretch of SE Hawthorne Ct. here, but no stones in sight.
  
  
• P10, 178th & Hawthorne: No Hawthorne here. The P10 point would be in the Greater Portland Christian Academy parking lot.
  
  
• P11, 197th & Hawthorne: Again, no Hawthorne. It's an industrial area next to a huge quarry pit. The closest street is 199th, also called 11 Mile Ave.
  
  
• P12 & P13 would be in the middle of Gresham suburbia. The Portland street grid basically doesn't exist at this point, and I haven't bothered taking a straightedge to a map to figure out exactly where these two would be. If there's no Hawthorne, there are almost certainly no milestones, in any event.
  
  
• P14 would be around the SW corner of the MHCC campus, where the Stark P14 is at the NW corner.
  
  
• P15 would probably be on Stark, actually. After its own (missing) P15, Stark departs from the street grid and winds down the hill to the Stark St. Bridge over the Sandy River. In the process, it intersects where Hawthorne would be if it existed at this point. Except that Hawthorne would need to drop straight down a steep bluff to get here.
  
  

So, if there was a series of Hawthorne milestones, my guess is that they didn't extend past Mt. Tabor, and this is the only surviving one. I'd say there's an off chance there was a P5 too, but it's not there now either. It's a shame. If there was at least one more, it would nail the case for milestones on Hawthorne. As it is, I could be making all this fuss over absolutely nothing. Although it's still a very old rock, and it would be interesting to learn what it is and how it got here, regardless.

dismality (hawthorne bridge)

Another foggy, damp, dismal December day...

Alameda & 38th

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Today's fascinating adventure takes us to the Alameda neighborhood and the 3-way intersection of NE Alameda, 38th Ave., and Klickitat St. There's a little triangle of land here that isn't quite a traffic circle (since it's not a circle) and not quite a city park. I'm not sure it really merits a post here, but I have a couple of photos and a couple of links to share, and bits are cheap on the interwebs, so I figure I might as well. The photos aren't that great because they were taken from a moving car; I hit this and a couple of other minor spots after tracking down the Vernon Ross Veterans Memorial, and I was short on time, and I didn't see any compelling reasons to stop.

The "park" made it onto the lower rungs of my TODO list after I saw a mention of it in this Urban Adventure League post from 2006, documenting one of their usual bike tour and hip-n-healthy vegan potluck thingys. Alameda is a fairly genteel neighborhood, and you'd think residents would be alarmed about their little park being invaded by a pack of hummus-guzzling hipsters. The post doesn't mention anything about people getting tasered by Officer Friendly, though. Maybe they just left that part out. I dunno.

There's one other brief mention of the place out on the net, in this doc from the city archives, where the parks bureau lists various esoteric locations it's done maintenance work on over the years. In other words, this isn't the last time I'll be linking to that list. Because if there's one common theme in this blog, it's chasing down obscure and esoteric crap that nobody except me cares about ( as proven by my usual readership numbers ). Half of the time, I barely care about it, or at least I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I do.

This time around, the excursion was partly an excuse to wander around the Alameda area a bit. It's a part of town I don't know very well. Apparently I'm even less familiar with it than I thought I was, because nothing looked at all familiar. Fortunately, the interwebs ride to the rescue once again: Check out Alameda Old House History, about the history of the neighborhood. From which I gather it's pretty much been quiet and respectable from day one.

A few semi-related pop culture tidbits to pass along: Klickitat St. features in the Ramona series of children's books by Beverly Cleary. I don't think I ever read any of those as a kid, but basically everyone else has. So this is the general area to make a pilgrimage to, if you're so inclined. Meanwhile, Alameda St. sort of figures in an Elliott Smith song of the same name. And nearby Alameda Brewing has a tasty Klickitat Pale Ale.

If there's any pop culture miscellany about NE 38th out there, I've yet to uncover it. So if I haven't linked to your epic poem about life, love, and death on 38th Avenue, or your gallery of watercolor streetscapes of same, or edgy indie documentary about same, I'm not ignoring you, I simply haven't found you yet. So feel free to post a link in the comments or whatever.

Thx. Mgmt.

blogspam assault

A couple of hours ago, the five most recent posts here all got identical blogspam comments advertising cheap -- and probably counterfeit -- luxury shoes and handbags. That really pissed me off, as you might imagine, so I went and looked up the WHOIS data for the domains mentioned in the spam. The domain contact info for all of them (assuming this info is correct) lists locations around Southern China. I don't know if they're all part of the same operation, or whether they banded together to flood the interwebs with blogspam. Either way, I felt a little name and shame was in order.

The spam heavily touts shoes allegedly "by" Christian Louboutin, a French designer best known for extreme stiletto heels. I assume the spammer's not selling the real thing, since the advertised prices run between 50% and 90% off what the real ones generally go for. So it's not hard to imagine that somewhere in South China there's a sweatshop full of six year olds working night and day churning these things out, or else.

My usual argument about spammers is that you don't want to do business with them because that just encourages them and causes more spam. I think that's a no-brainer. And they also shouldn't be rewarded for trademark infringement, which is also a no-brainer. And the fact that they're spamming to advertise goods that are illegal to import into the US (and which are seized and destroyed by the Feds when discovered) should be a clear sign that you don't want to give your credit card number or other personal details to these guys. Again, duh.

Beyond that (and call me clueless and male if you like), it seems to me that you especially don't want to buy cheap knockoff stiletto heels, more than most things. If you buy a $10 fake Rolex from a guy in Times Square, the worst that can happen is that it doesn't tell time properly, or maybe it turns your wrist green. Well, or you become the butt of cruel jokes when everyone except you can tell it's not a real Rolex. (I've seen this, btw.) But suppose the kid who made your imitation Christian Louboutins was having a bad day -- too busy crying and missing her parents, perhaps -- and didn't glue a heel on quite right, and it pops off while you're making your grand entrance at a party. Thud! And if you get hurt in the fall, good luck finding someone to sue.

I've run across at least one other blogger annoyed by the ongoing spam assault. He suggests that people go after them in small claims court en masse, as a sort of legal DDOS attack. I'm not inclined to do that myself, since I doubt it would do any good, and I'm not sure how I'd show monetary losses or emotional distress -- it hasn't cost me anything, and I cheerfully admit that outing the occasional spammer for sport is kind of fun. Possibly small claims courts work differently in Canada, making this strategy worth pursuing there. I dunno.

Which brings us to today's Rogues' Gallery. For all of the domain contacts, I made the mail addresses into mailto links, to guarantee that any address-harvesting spambots that visit here will be sure to notice them. That seems only fair, don't you think?

FWIW, according to the Wikipedia article on Chinese phone numbers, it looks like all but one of the numbers shown here are mobile phones. Any 11-digit phone number starting with '1' is a mobile phone, apparently. As for the remaining one, you're supposed to drop the leading '0' if calling from outside China, apparently. The rest of the number starts with "27", which really is the prefix for the city of Wuhan. So that may indicate the domain info is accurate, or at least not totally bogus. Oh, and the country code for China is 86, and in the US you dial 011 first when making an international call, i.e. "011 86 27xxxxxxxx", where the 8 x's are the digits of a number in Wuhan, for example. Again, FWIW.

So here's the list:

• christianlouboutinmy.com
  xiao, dongdong 9312521@qq.com
  xingfulu64#
  nanyang, henan 473000
  China
  13849792338
  
  
• handbagcom.com
  ma, zhuzhu xinzhogndian@gmail.com
  huayuanlu 20hao
  wuhan, hubei 430000
  China
  02785879032
  
  
• bootsluxury.com
  zhao, dong zhaodong09@tom.com
  no.40 luzhou road
  fuzhou, fujian 351100
  China
  13203659862
  
  
• handbagsboots.com
  dong, lin guandong230@yahoo.com
  9# sanyu jie
  guangzhou, guangdong 510000
  China
  15963265910
  
  
• eurluxury.com
  zhao, dongdong handbags521@tom.com
  num 4 luzhou road
  fuzhou, fujian 350011
  China
  +86.13203659862
  
  
• bootsluxury.com
  zhao, dong zhaodong09@tom.com
  no.40 luzhou road
  fuzhou, fujian 351100
  China
  13203659862
  
  
• handbagspop.com
  wei, chen weiwei238@yahoo.com.cn
  no.32 leuo road
  dongguan, guangdong 512000
  China
  15126365980
  

Actually it turns out I have a partial IP address for the spammer too. Usually they're careful not to leave tracks like this. If I was using the paid version of Sitemeter, I might have their full IP; as it is, I've got "174.37.24.#", from -- you guessed it -- somewhere in China. It looks like he or she showed up via the Next Blog button (believe it or not) and proceeded to spam all the posts on the front page. And then, most likely, hit Next Blog again and went off to spam someone else. The bastard.

infrared fire

Another experiment for your, um, enjoyment. OPB has the Yule Log they rerun every year, and now I have this.

faces (japanese american historical plaza)

fountain, pioneer place

So here's a cheesy, amateurish video clip of the fountain in the Pioneer Place food court. I normally wouldn't bother including mall food court fountain in the ongoing fountain project, except that a.) I just got a shiny new 5th generation iPod nano with the builtin video camera -- for free, no less -- and I wanted to try out the video feature; and b.) I happened to be in the mall food court anyway due to a strange hankering for sleazy greasy food court Chinese food. If you're ever in the mood for that, Pioneer Place is where you want to go. There's one official Chinese place, and several others are thinly veiled Chinese, including the allegedly Greek and Cajun ones. If you want Orange Chicken, you go to the regular Chinese place, but if you'd rather have Lemon Chicken, you go across the food court to the Greek place. Apparently they all have the same parent company, which I guess explains the similarities, but it's still kind of weird.

Elsewhere on the interwebs, I ran across this photo of the fountain, and a recent video that's remarkably similar to mine, although shot from the other side of the fountain. There's even a Pioneer Place Flickr pool, if you can believe that (although there's only one member, so I don't know if it really counts as a pool or not). There's bound to be more stuff out there, but this is all the searching I'm inclined to do right now.

Btw, my fortune cookie read "YOU WILL SOON BE THE CENTER OF ATTENTION". Call me antisocial if you like, but that sounds kind of ominous, if you ask me. I mean, unless this clip here becomes the next inexplicable viral video, which I wouldn't bet on. I'm not a superstitious person by any means, but when I can I like to take two fortune cookies. That way they cancel each other out, and you get your free will back. I mean, I don't seriously believe that, but I think a little play-superstition is ok if it means you get an extra fortune cookie.

Mmmm.... fortune cookies....

excalibur, las vegas

A few photos of the Excalibur, the sorta-medieval-themed casino on the South Strip in Vegas. I'd just like to stress, emphatically, that we did not stay at the Excalibur. It's corny on the outside, and cheap and trashy on the inside. If you like county fairs, you'll love the Excalibur -- it's basically the same idea, except with slot machines, and without the farm animals. I didn't see any farm animals, anyway. Maybe you have to bring your own, if you're into that.

I mean, it's silly to get all snooty and class-conscious in Vegas, of all places, and it's great that the city still has some affordable options despite the ultra-upscale trend of the last few years. But honestly, when I pass through there on my way somewhere else (which happens rather a lot), I instantly realize I'm not among my tribe. When it dawns on you that you're the only guy in the room who doesn't have a favorite NASCAR driver, you just kind of hope you can slink away quietly before anyone finds out.



The worst thing about the Excalibur is the shopping arcade on the level above the casino floor. If you're on your way to or from the Luxor, you have to make your way through this claustrophobic, low-ceilinged maze of twisty little passages all alike. It's lined with cheap trinket vendors, their wares spilling out into the passageway, plus a few fast food vendors here and there, I guess for sustenance as you try to find your way out. The labyrinth is confusing enough when you're perfectly sober. And if, hypothetically, one was nursing the last dregs of a mega-monster-sized frozen mango daiquiri in a novelty cup at the time, no doubt it would be even more perplexing. Hypothetically speaking.

autumn ginkgo, plaza blocks

I haven't posted many fall photos this year. It wasn't a very photogenic autumn, unfortunately, and I wasn't too enthusiastic about its arrival. I also wasn't too enthusiastic about revisiting the old staples of fall photos: "Leaves Turning", "Falling Leaves", "Fallen Leaves", "Wet Leaves In The Rain", etcetera. But I did take a few of the ginkgo trees in the Plaza Blocks in downtown Portland (just steps from the Thompson Elk fountain, btw). They're attractive trees, with unusual leaves that turn a bright golden color in the fall. They also drop a huge quantity of odd waxy-looking orange fruit, as shown in the next photo:



It all seems very nice and pleasant and photogenic and so forth, which is because there's currently no way to communicate odors over the interwebs. And if that technology existed, I would not inflict this smell on you, o Gentle Reader(s). When I took these photos, the air was thick with a sickening vomit-like stench. The little fruits, you see, are packed with foul-smelling butyric acid, and those that fall on the sidewalk are soon crushed underfoot into a slippery, orange, malodorous paste. It's really quite disgusting. But I endured it on your behalf in order to bring you these photos. You're welcome.



So I was surprised to see a couple of middle-aged Asian women with buckets gathering the fruit. It turns out that the stinky fruit contains a tasty edible nut, widely used in China and basically unknown and ignored here. There are recipes all over the net, though (see for example "Ginkgo Nut Custards", "Japanese Tempura Salad With Ginkgo Nuts", and "Shimeji Mushrooms and Ginkgo Nut Parcel"). I've never tried the nuts myself, but I'm happy to spread the word if it means more people will come and take the smelly fruits away.



You've probably seen various health-fad, not-evaluated-by-the-FDA ads touting ginkgo biloba as a miracle cure for assorted ailments. These, ah, unconfirmed health claims are for an extract of, not the fruit or the nut, but the leaves. But don't rush out and grab an armload of leaves just yet. They (and reportedly other parts of the tree) are also loaded with uroshiol, the same substance that makes poison oak itchy for most people. Apparently I'm not one of those people, which I consider an unusual bit of good fortune. Ginkgo leaves have never given me any trouble, nor have mango skins (mangoes are botanical cousins of poison oak, believe it or not). I also can't recall ever having trouble with poison oak, despite being an avid but somewhat inattentive hiker. (Although I make up for that by magically attracting every biting insect within a ten mile radius, so it's not all good news.)



The smell problem can be avoided by planting only male (and thus nonfruiting) trees. It's just that it's hard to tell the difference. You can do expensive DNA tests, or you can just plant the tree and wait a few decades (yes, decades) until it's ready to start reproducing and hope for the best. We seem to have chosen the latter option. If this was your backyard, you could always just chop the tree down and start over, but it's not that simple in a city park. There will be hearings, and debate, and well-meaning eco types will chain themselves to the trees, and then they'll get all itchy from touching them, and then they'll sue the city for emotional distress, and it'll all be a huge expensive hassle. So I imagine we'll be stuck with puke-smelling mush on our sidewalks for the foreseeable future. But at least the ginkgos are in a part of town where many of those they inconvenience are criminals, lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and journalists. A cynic might argue that the ginkgo odor is appropriate here, given these circumstances.

pigeons, lovejoy fountain

I don't actually like pigeons very much, but I was walking through Lovejoy Fountain Plaza, camera in hand, and the little bastards mobbed me. So here are a few photos. It's possible they saw the camera bag and assumed it contained birdseed. That wouldn't be an unreasonable guess -- there's a strange guy who wanders around the neighborhood constantly feeding birds, and as I left the park I passed him going the other way. I suppose it was close to the usual feeding time, and the pigeons were getting hungry, because they usually don't mob people like that.



I don't know the guy's name. I've never been remotely inclined to talk to him, and I just think of him as the Bird Weirdo. He's not just about pigeons, you see; you can always tell he's coming before you see him by the flock of seagulls overhead. No, seriously, it's true, this actually happens. He tosses scraps of bread up to them as he makes his rounds, and they wheel around him overhead, screeching and squabbling, as if they were chasing a herring trawler.



I'm not opposed to the general notion of feeding birds, as you can tell from the preceding hummingbird post. And I realize that encountering a steady stream of eccentric characters and dubious persons is, we're told, one of the manifold joys of urban living, although I have my doubts. But the Bird Weirdo goes to all this trouble for the sake of birds which are, to be blunt, vermin. "Rats with wings", Woody Allen called them (although the description can't possibly have originated with him). If the Bird Weirdo walked the streets of Portland with a bucket of anchovies, badgered by a persistent mob of unruly penguins, that would be understandable. Smelly and noisy, but understandable. Or if he had a cage of feeder rats and walked about tossing them to the local owls... well, that would be a bit gross, but at least it'd be quiet, and it still might be understandable depending on how cute the owls are. And if he walked about with a box of Saltines, catering to a local flock of colorful macaws, all of whom had learned English from foulmouthed Cockney gangsters, well, that would be adorable.



In short, there are many variations on bird feeding that could be considered a valuable public service, or at least a charmingly eccentric hobby. But the Bird Weirdo does none of those. No, it's pigeons and seagulls for him, and I don't see why he bothers. It doesn't even look like any fun. It's not like either bird is known for its brainpower or complex social behavior. If it was ravens, you could set up food puzzles for them, so they earn a twinkie or a chunk of roadkill by pecking a series of buttons in the right order, or beating you at chess, or whatever. Pigeons, not so much. Other than the homing pigeon thing (which I've never witnessed firsthand), as far as I can tell all they do is eat and make more pigeons at an alarming rate. Which leads to scenes like this.

the hummingbird again

More intermediate results in the ongoing quest for really good hummingbird photos. It would probably help to get set up and lie in wait for it, rather than just grabbing the camera in a hurry and firing off a few uncomposed shots when it shows up, with whatever lens happens to be attached. But hey. I've never been that great at planning ahead.

tug & barge, willamette river

infrared contrail