cherryleaf

Sunshine through the dark purple leaves of an ornamental cherry tree, Portland Center Park.

a wet leaf, 1st avenue

daisy, 1st avenue

big pink

A few -- ok, more than a few -- photos of downtown Portland's US Bancorp Tower, semi-universally known (here in town) as "Big Pink". It's ended up in a lot of photos of mine over the years, but I've never devoted a post to it, probably because I don't devote a lot of time to office buildings here. It's not my favorite building in town, but I had to venture an opinion about it, I suppose it would be a generally favorable one. It makes for interesting photos at times, and I've fetched many a quick office drone lunch from the restaurants on the ground floor. And I once watched Mt. St. Helens erupt while having a tasty local beer at the Portland City Grill on the 30th floor. There may be other cities where you can do something like that, but the list has to be rather short. On the other hand, the building is #37 at Things About Portland That Suck.


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In any case, the collected pics make for a rather interesting photoset, so here they are as a slideshow. Assuming you have Flash, I mean. If you're visiting from an iPad, or a Blackberry, or you disabled Flash for whatever reason, or you're running Chrome and Flash up and crashed on you, the plain old Flickr photoset is here. If you use Lynx and your browser doesn't support images of any kind, I'm not sure what to say except that I admire your eccentricity and stubbornness. Sort of.

icecrystalline

What you're looking at here are some macro shots of ice crystals on the lid of a forgotten pint of lemon sorbet, discovered lurking at the back of the freezer. I hope that doesn't remove too much of the cool factor, assuming it was present to begin with.

banana: resurrection

My banana tree died during the big cold snap in January. I was absolutely sure it was dead. It froze solid, and basically liquefied when it thawed. Its planter then sat, ignored, in a corner on the balcony, empty but for a small brown forlorn stump.



So imagine my surprise last week when green shoots began popping up out of the stump. At first, I assumed they were weeds, but on closer inspection they're unmistakably banana leaves. Tiny, delicate little banana leaves.



Some would argue it's bad luck to blog about this yet, when this tiny plant could still up and die on me tomorrow. But I don't really believe in jinxes, even with garden plants. And I have a feeling that posting photos of it may increase the odds that I'll remember to water the thing.



Since it "came back to life" when I thought it was a goner, I'm kind of thinking I really ought to start a cult around it. My banana tree, after all, froze and went all gelatinous for your sins. Presumably. It never really said anything specific to that effect, so I'm making some convenient assumptions here. Regardless, now it's back. So really, everyone ought to give me all their money and obey me without question. I mean, we'd hate to anger the banana plant, wouldn't we? If it's capable of reviving after eight months, it's capable of anything.

iridescent wings

Tiny iridescent wings, trapped in a spider's web, deep in a moss-draped forest. McDowell Creek County Park, Lebanon OR.

From the Archives: Scenery near Crater Lake

I've now got a week's worth of staycation photos to sort through. Nearly 1200, in fact. In the meantime, here are a few from the archives, from 2007's mini-roadtrip. These were taken in Crater Lake National Park, but they aren't of Crater Lake itself, nor are they of the Pumice Desert just north of the lake. So even though they're quite scenic, they didn't make the cut. Until now. Enjoy!

fremont east, las vegas

an eternal constant

As seen near NE 33rd & Sandy. I'm not really a historian of commercial art, or a historian of any kind really, but I'd guess this "Cocktails" sign was created somewhere on the far side of 1960, maybe 1950, maybe even earlier. Since the sign doesn't appear to have moved between then and now, I'd imagine the adjacent building has been home to one bar after another for at least half a century if not more. All of them presumably offering cocktails.

A couple of years ago this spot was home to a Mexican restaurant & nightclub, but a fatal shooting in January 2008 seems to have put an end to that. More recently -- and controversially -- the building reopened as an upscale (by Portland standards) gentlemens club. So I can't help but wonder what some of its previous incarnations were like. Perhaps an outrageous 60's tiki bar, with ridiculously strong cocktails in ceramic moai mugs, and a house orchestra covering Martin Denny's greatest hits. In the 50's it could have featured an ooky racist theme, trying to compete with the infamous Coon Chicken Inn 20 blocks to the east. Could be there's an authentic vintage 70's disco ball gathering dust in the attic, next to a crate full of 45 singles and long-expired Quaaludes. NE Sandy was kind of a dump in the 80's, so I doubt this spot ever featured ferns and wine coolers and Nagel prints and cokehead stockbrokers. Unless they were slumming, which is possible of course.

We may never know for sure, as "real" historians aren't overly interested in this sort of thing. Perhaps if it gets turned into a McMenamins someday we'll get the full story. Generously embellished, of course, and presented as a wacky psychedelic mural. But hey.

Summer, Oregon Park

Taken earlier today. Contrast these with an earlier post that featured rather grim & wintry photos of the same spot, taken April '09.