It wouldn't be year's end at this humble blog without a post with some of my Instagram cat photos from the last year. (Oh, and I haven't done a post this month yet & the rules say I need to do at least one.) So here's this year's edition of Instagram cats:
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Pantheon Hall Rose
Next up is another rose from a Portland Roses Tumblr post, this time outside the huge, ramshackle New Copper Penny bar/nightclub complex in Lents. A 2014 Willamette Week article described the owner's efforts to fight City Hall, particularly PDC officials who wanted, no, needed his land for upscale condos and goat yoga boutiques and so forth. The fight went the way fighting City Hall usually goes, and the land's been sold to an apartment building developer, so say goodbye to another piece of sleazy, disreputable Old Portland. The drawings for the proposed new building look entirely soulless, a carbon copy of every other new apartment building around the city, and I'm sure many other US cities too. At least central Lents may finally get its first Starbucks this way, I guess.
23rd & alberta roses
And here's the rose design I mentioned in the previous post, also by artist Pablo Garcia. Street View says this was still there as of June 2016. Like most other pictures of roses you see here, I ran across this in a Portland Roses Tumblr post.
ne 23rd & alberta mural
This mural was on the side of a building at NE 23rd & Alberta just over a year ago. It was created by artist Pablo Garcia, who also did the elephant mural that replaced it, which I don't have photos of, as well as the rose design on the front of the building, which you'll see in the next post.
Friday, November 25, 2016
ne 27th-28th alley murals, ne alberta
Next up (and still on NE Alberta), here are a couple of murals on either side of the alley between NE 27th & 28th. I don't know who created these or when, or even whether they're "official" or just sort of appeared overnight. You might think that since Alberta's heavily marketed as an artsy sort of place, someone might be maintaining a map or a list somewhere, so you could go on an art stroll around the neighborhood after your fancy wine and cheese party. As far as I can tell nobody's taken on that project. I mean, I suppose if you needed that you could probably use the "NE Alberta" tag here in lieu of a proper quality list. I tend to say "I don't know" quite a lot, but at least I usually get the locations and photos right.
ne 29th & alberta murals
These panels are, or were, on the side of a building at NE 29th & Alberta. They looked potentially temporary, and I took these photos over a year ago, so it's possible they aren't there anymore. And it's NE Alberta, so it's possible the entire building isn't there anymore.
mural, ne 30th & alberta
The ongoing mural tour is back on NE Alberta again, this time at Alberta & 30th. This one was on my todo list thanks to a post on the Portland Roses Tumblr. That's all I know about this one, I'm afraid.
"Rediscovering Belmont" Mural
Next mural up is a fading one at SE 30th & Belmont, on the same building as the Peace Mural we visited some months ago. A 1999 issue of CultureWork (a University of Oregon arts publication) mentions it:
One of my favorite murals in Portland is the 1,725 sq.ft. "Rediscovering Belmont" mural on the Futon Factory at SE 30th and Belmont Streets. I'm always engaged by it every time I walk or drive by. It took five months to organize, two weeks to paint, and involved over 100 neighborhood volunteers, including schools, neighbors, and local businesses. If you read the attached plaque you'll see that it was sponsored and supported by the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association, AmeriCorps Members for Neighborhood Safety, Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Program, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, and supported by the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office, Bitar Brothers, Corp. and the city's Graffiti Abatement Project.
Much of the rest of the article is devoted to lamenting the art vs. billboards legal battle that put nearly all murals on hold in Portland in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I've discussed that a few times before, most recently in another post earlier today. So I won't go into that again here.
Lents Crossroads Plaza
Next up is another small public space on SE Foster, the Lents Crossroads Plaza at the corner of Foster & 92nd. It was built back in 2001 or so, meant to be a sort of central gathering place for a neighborhood that didn't have one. There wasn't anything going on when I was there, so I had to resort to the intergoogles to figure out what it's for. Which probably gives an entirely random and unrepresentative sense of the place, but here goes.
- The main thing that happens regularly here is the Lents Farmers Market; I haven't been to it and I'm not sure whether it's in the plaza itself or the grassy area next door.
- There was a pop-up coffee shop for a while in summer 2015, since downtown Lents somehow doesn't have a single brick-and-mortar coffee place, which is just uncivilized, if true. How is this even possible, in the year 2016, in Portland? Maybe it's just that there's, like, a Starbucks somewhere nearby, and they have the sense not to count it.
- An East PDX News article mentioned a hopefully-annual "May Day Pig Roast" held on May 1st, but neglected to mention which year it was. A 2009 Willamette Week article wringing its hands about Lents's proposed (but never built) minor league baseball stadium had a puzzling description for the place: "If Portland filmmakers ever needed a street corner that looked like the Eastern Bloc, the Lents Crossroads would be a perfect fit." I have no idea what they meant by that.
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.
Monday, November 21, 2016
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.
Sunday, November 20, 2016
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.
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