I’ve spent my pandemic quarantine deleting photos from my computer. There were over 18,000 images clogging my hard drive. I had to reclaim space. Anybody would have told me to get an external hard drive which I have but it’s full of video footage. Another one is not the answer. It can’t keep everything and move it around. Stuff has to go. My digital hoarder issues got real when I began getting constant messages about my start up disk being full. Let’s switch gears before this post devolves into a Mac Help Forum.

If anyone asks what I did during the pandemic I’ll start talking trashed photos. I never got to the boxes of actual photos that need culling. Photographs pile up. Dealing with real photos is for another day or a future pandemic. I deleted thousands of photos. Many were duplicates from technological advances that transfer photos from my phone to my main computer. The computer also creates copies of photos I edit. Dealing with photo clones took time.

Common photo themes included shots of old mattresses, abandoned TV sets, our chickens, impossible-to-photograph-with-an-iPhone antenna toppers and stickers in the shape of Oregon. Then there was my shopping cart obsession. If anyone can tell me what it’s about I’d appreciate it.

There’s some grand statement I’m looking for, something metaphorical. I hoped that if I got the right angle I’d achieve a mythical image. Yet, there will never be much art in the banal. Andy Warhol might have disagreed. At the very least I’m trying to take a worthwhile photograph and document out of place shopping carts.

Maybe I was trying to live up to the standard that was set when a friend called the Portland Orbit “the shopping cart blog.” I want to be THE shopping cart blog even if I only run posts about them once in a blue moon. I was overrun with shopping cart photos which has to be better than being run over by a shopping cart. The carts drifted into my North Portland neighborhood making them easy pickings.

Since moving to SW, I don’t see neglected carts much. The one above appeared in the parking lot of the Barbur Transit Center empty due to the pandemic. Seeing shopping carts outside of their supermarket parking lot environment, I tend to forget they’re used by homeless people to cart their stuff around. There is a purpose in their relocations but it isn’t until they’re emptied and abandoned that their appearance hints at a deeper significance.

I discovered the crown jewel of my shopping cart fascination at the Woodstock Trader Joe’s. There on a pole elevated into the heavens was a red shopping cart gleaming in the sun like a beacon. To me it honored all the world’s lost shopping carts. The sad reality is that it’s only there to show people where to return their carts.

Pictures of shopping carts discarded on their sides have always pulled at my heartstrings. There’s drama in what I have to imagine is a kicked over cart left to transpire. I had to go for the added bonus of working the Mercedes insignia into the shot to make a high class/low class statement. This hardly seems fair because pushing a cart in a grocery store is not indicative of any class at all. I will admit that this was more than likely taken at a Fred Meyer’s parking lot where carts are expected to be returned not shoved on their side.

My attempt to increase the art factor has always been to change the image from color to black and white. Again it’s a cart on it’s side heaving like a broken legged horse. It’s quite possible that any wayward shopping cart with a soul would beach itself a some point. It’s not easy being dragged away from a shopping center. That would be enough to make anyone give up.

I had this theory about two restaurants. There had to be a connection. One I saw a bunch of times when I had a temp job around the NW 23^rd business district. The other, a place I drove past many times on Columbia Boulvard. These places were two peas in a pod but I’m not sure that was on their menus. They had similar signs. Sure signs can be designed and bought by any sign maker. They were billed as one person operations. This is not the case with Bonnie’s—it was family owned. They both specialized in burgers and teriyaki. Okay, that’s an unusual combination but it’s probably a coincidence. I wanted a story and I wanted it so bad I realized I had to make it up, something that’s never been done this blatantly in a Portland Orbit story. It goes something like this:

Bernie and Bonnie met in a meet cute way that had something to do with spilled food or a broken dish.They fell in love over their passions for making and serving delicious meals. Food was their lives so they combined them getting married and opening a restaurant. It was nothing fancy, family fare—the basics. (I’ll get the research department in on this) but let’s name the place B & B’s Diner. No, that doesn’t work so they renamed it BeeBee’s. Life was good, in the kitchen and everywhere in between.

In all stories something has to happen. Over time the stress, the challenge of running a small business took its toll. Both restaurateurs had their niche but their combined efforts didn’t jell. Bernie and Bonnie had different ideas about their respective Teriyaki recipes. Their stubbornness and inability to compromise led to fights in the kitchen that threatened to spill into the dining area.Tension made the work environment difficult and some staff quit. To paraphrase a line from an old Burt Reynolds (not Ryan Reynolds) movie: the love had gone out of their relationship. Where love had once inspired great meals that satisfied customers their restaurant venture couldn’t survive without it.

One restaurant became two. Was there animosity? It seems possible since their establishments ended up spreading out from one end of the city to the other. Bonnie’s went to NW 21st in a building tucked under a billboard in that bore her name. The establishment shared space with a gas station. This always brought to mind one of the rules of the road that Fred Owens and I learned the hard way: Never eat in a restaurant attached to a gas station. I’m trying to be fair here. This is a love story gone bad not a restaurant review. I’d like to tell you about Bonnie’s but rules are rules. I’m sure those who could overlook the connection to the gas station appreciated the food.

Bernie’s place has always intrigued me. It has a desolate feel as if set in an Edward Hopper painting. It looks like an ideal place to nurse an espresso on a cold, gray afternoon. Any other thoughts about the place would be assumptions. I’ve never been there. It looks like a rough and tumble, blue collar joint. That’s an opinion formed from its location in the middle of an industrial section of town intersected by Columbia Boulevard.

I’m not poking fun or being snooty. I’ve always liked Bernie’s large windows facing the road. It allowed me to look in as I drove by. I could imagine the atmosphere with food smells drifting off the grill. It feels like a place to hide out and wile away an afternoon if I ever had one of those to kill. Or maybe it’s about the quick bite of cheap, filling food. In deciding to read up on some reviews of these places I came across a 4 star Yelp review that described Bernie’s Hamburgers & Teriyaki by saying, “this place does not look spectacular from the outside.” That is part of its charm.

Meanwhile across town I received some sad news after finding a Reedit thread that spelled out the demise of Bonnie’s Burger and Teriyaki restaurant that was run by a Korean family. At this point the piece becomes a bit of an Orbit Obit. A major renovation of the gas station resulted in a decision to go in a Convienience Mart direction. Bonnie’s had to close. My best guess was that this happened in June of 2019. There was fanfare from dedicated fans who enjoyed the good, cheap meals they dished out but there was no word on whether Bonnie has ever reunited with Bernie.