Wildlife of Killingsworth

May 21, 2015June 22, 2017Leave a comment

How wild are things going to get on a street that runs through the campus of a community college? There’s a pho place we like and I’m in awe of the Florida Room with the cryptic messages they leave on their marquee and that one bar, Ducketts Public House, looks like a place for an intense experience. We’re talking a completely different kind of wildlife. It may just be a coincidence and not a homage to any real animals that roam up and down Killingsworth St. because I have never seen any. I noticed a theme of sorts on Killingsworth that has to be more accidental than planned. It first became apparent with Elk Cleaners & Laundry.

IMG_5577 (1)

The business is named for animals that haven’t roamed this part of town for hundreds of years, if they ever did, and has a mural advertising what is now a defunct dry cleaners and laundry operation featuring the portrait of an Elk trophy head. More evidence of demise is the obscured phone number at the bottom of the sign. I’m glad to see the mural/signage remains.

On the same block, a mature buck deer graces the sign of the Saraveza Bottle Shop and Pasty Tavern. The sign is a beautiful thing, majestic in it’s animal choice, portraiture and woodsy feel from the background design. How the deer works with the bar known to be a Packer fan hang out, I’m not sure, but it fits in well with the remains of the Elk Cleaners a few steps away. It does prove that a handsome animal will improve any sign.

My favorite wildlife sighting, and the last one on this tour, remains up the road around 42nd Ave.

It’s a cement deer with wide antlers and a beat up face that I’ve always appreciated for it’s folk art and outsider art appearance. My assumption had been that the fountain design was made from white shells, but it’s only rocks that look like shells from a distance.

All the times I drove past the deer’s habitat, I never realized he was posing next to a fountain until I got close enough to take his picture. Sadly it was not operational at the time of my visit.

So there you have many a wildlife tribute on the not so wild street of Killingsworth. Then again it’s not such a dull street. It did have a Minus 5 album named after it.

Bill Murray Triptych

May 16, 2015June 22, 20173 Comments

Hanging around the Cully neighborhood in northeast Portland on a recent substitute teaching assignment had me enduring minor transportation calamities in the way of two trashed/flat bike tires (thanks for helping Cat Six Cycles), discovering that a record shop called Jump Jump exists in the neighborhood and the possibility that germy kids put the kybosh on my ability to digest birthday celebration chicken wings. It’s all par for the course I’d have to say and finding Bill Murray’s face immortalized in artistic expression, in triplicate no less, soothed my soul and made it somehow worth it.

Gracing the back of an apartment mail box container on NE Prescott Ave. was the Bill Murray Triptych. Amazingly I was able ride by it the first time without stopping to genuflect. I filed this phenomenon away and returned for a photo. The image seems to come from Murray’s quintessential role in the film Stripes. The art captures Murray in all his Zen comedic charm, smirk and swagger. It has the feel of a Warhol homage in its decal, spray paint and screen print. Where Warhol created art based on one named legends like Elvis and Marilyn, this unknown artist offers passersby a portrait of a man of the people. I’d be hard pressed to consider that the Postmaster General would be have a problem with apartment mailbox vandalism when one look at Bill Murray in any form makes people feel good and would cheer up even the most down and out stragglers who happen by.

The work is marred only by a fellow vandal who decided to join the fray. I have no problem with the sticker, subject matter or design. I’ve seen this sticker around and it seems a faint homage to Paul Stanley so maybe there’s a celebrity theme going on but I would have preferred to see the predominant piece of art given some space and not crowded out by a more colors and noise. Don’t mess with Bill Murray with your GOO GOO for God’s sake.

A triptych is really the way to go here. One Bill Murray would not have been enough yet any more than three would have thrown the universe off balance. I’m not sure everyone in the neighborhood knows who Bill Murray is but it’s a face and artwork that with one glance returns a sense of serene, comedic calm and possibly even enlightenment. It’s a generous offering of street art, taking it out of the normal confines of the art world and exhibiting it on the side of the road where fine art is rarely seen. I can only imagine how Bill Murray figured out that he could entertain the world, but I’m glad he did. Forget your troubles, stop, and look at Bill Murray.

BOO-BOO

North Portland Carver’s Camp

May 15, 2015September 13, 2016Leave a comment

In a quiet neighborhood a block away from the bustle of the Interstate Fred Meyer lies something usually found in rural areas of the state. On a gravel pipestem driveway with scraps of trees as a border stand various log sculptures in an array of configurations and stages of completion. A carver’s camp of little know origin has sprung up at the intersection of N. Bryant St. and N. Montana Ave.

A few passes by the site never revealed the carvings creator or whether they’re for sale. A conversation about chainsaws may have been the result of meeting the North Portland carver or perhaps a deeper understanding for the talent and inspiration behind the creation of this art from fireplace logs. The Portland Orbit’s crack investigation team seems more interested in doing crack than investigating something. A knock on the door of the house connected to the driveway may have provided a clue to the identity of the carver but the no trespassing signs may have proved too intimidating to follow this line of questioning.

No matter the welcome sign hung across a particular wood sprite made it easy to spend time looking over the folksy, outdoorsy and crafty sculptures.

This is the kind of thing lovingly made fun of by the Pemco Insurance Company in their insightful profiles of people of the Northwest advertising campaign.

Update: July 22, 2015

As of the last couple of times I’ve ridden by the Carver’s Camp, I’ve noticed it’s been completely dismantled. There is no evidence that it existed. Only a sign that says something about slowing down for children is left. I’ve seen no logs or carvings. I throw this out to let anyone that might want to visit know. The only evidence of the wood carving in the area is a small bear sculpture in front of a house down the street from the camp on Montana Ave.

Sick Day

May 8, 2015May 10, 2015Leave a comment

For any readers expecting to see a post when I usually try to post of Friday afternoons, I thought I’d let you know I spent the previous night dealing with the results of either food poisoning or a flu bug picked up from kids at an elementary school. And what a night it was! I’ll spare you details of my demise only to let you know I needed to lay around all day and do as little as possible which excluded attempts at trying to come up with cohesive sentences and typo free copy. I’ll be back next week. In the meantime, stay healthy.

Portland Has a Flag?

May 7, 2015May 7, 20171 Comment

On a recent couple of Max train trips I noticed a flag. It had stripes of blue and yellow outlined with white on a green background. I saw it flying over PGE Park. I know, I know it as PGE but it may or may not still be Jeld Wen Field. I had a conversation with someone who said it was now called Providence Park. This could be figured out with a quick search on the web but, anyway, the flag was flying where the Timbers play. I also saw it at a couple of fire stations. I was clued in by a sticker on a car. It was the image of the mystery flag with Portland printed underneath. Some quick internet research confirmed what I did not know after living in Portland for seven years. Portland has a flag. I had been mystified. This flag was all over and looking nordic to me, like a Finnish flag with different colors. A poster I saw while substitute teaching at an elementary school made me realize the colors and design reminded me more of the Tanzania flag.

This flag had my imagination wandering. I couldn’t put it together until I saw the decal. To give a true feel for the flag I could have borrowed an image from the internet and used it in this post but I was stuck on that particular decal image. I have no idea why I didn’t take a picture of it when I first saw it. I started obsessing over that decal. I kept going back on dog walks to where I thought I saw the car with the flag decal and I could never find it. It’s not as popular as the decal of the outline of the state of Oregon with the green heart in it. After a few bike commuter rides to a sub job and observing multiple car decals, I ran into the image on Tillamook Ave and snapped a photo.

Portland has a flag.

We saw the Portland flag flying outside a restaurant in Multnomah Village and my wife, Ronna, started speculating about what the colors represented, like green being about the ecology and blue symbolizing our rivers. It’s true, the colors and design are all significant. So in order to not get bogged down in those details, allow me to introduce a secondary source. I would have considered good colors for a Portland to be black, red and silver. The same colors as the Trail Blazers or representative of darkness, blood and silver.

The more amazing thing about my Portland flag discovery was learning about vexillology. I knew nothing about it. I can’t even pronounce it but it makes sense that there would be people interested in flags enough that there would be a science behind it. I could tell you more but you will soon be looking at a blog—what?!? Star Wars flag posts—and possibly be attending a meeting. You’ll become more obsessed with flags and flag decals and their design and symbolism than me.

Check out the Portland Flag Association website. The blog might make you think about flags in ways you never have and you can go to a meeting:

http://portlandflag.org

An Orbit Obit: Two Closed Stores

May 2, 2015May 19, 20171 Comment

I started thinking about two stores that I never went to that are now closed. One seems like it’s been closed for a couple of years the other ceased operating more recently. What hit me was this selfish attitude that I thought the stores should have stayed open until I got around to going to them. I’ve lived in the Portland area over seven years which was plenty of time to make a trek to these places that I never made. While the stores intrigued me, they didn’t sell anything I wanted. Still I missed out on getting a feel for the atmosphere of the places and I regret that. They seemed like quirky, Portlandy type establishments from a bygone era that we’re losing.

Fabric World

Fabric World was looking a bit run down for years. Then it was hard to tell if it was open. I saw this store many times driving up Lombard Ave towards St. Johns and I thought it was cool to have an independent fabric store in the area. Towards the end a boarded up window seemed to signal its demise.

I’m not the fabric sort. I do have good memories of my wife, Ronna, and I buzzing around Hancock Fabrics in Alexandria, Va. With a cup of coffee in hand and an over caffeinated brain, fabric and all the various gizmos that go with it take on a whole new meaning. I can tell you that a box of fabric from those days remains in one of our closets so we were never in the market to make acquisitions from Fabric World. The only consolation of missing the Fabric World experience is that now we don’t have bolts of a polyester blends hanging around the house. Marci Macfarlane writes about Fabric World on her blog Sewing With Cupcake (see the link below) which offers a detailed sense of the spirit of the place. Sadly it’s as close as I’ll get to the actual experience of having gone there.

Hollywood Costumers

If I’m remembering right there were painted cartoon pictures on the front window and some Star Wars cardboard cut outs there as well. It’s one of those landmarks for me, something that made me feel good when I saw it. Mostly when I was biking around the intersection of 7th Ave and SE Hawthorne. I could tell there was a whole world inside that store. How could a costume shop not be an interesting and magical place? And yet, I am not a costume renting person. I leave that up to my film maker hero Jeff Dodge. It seems like the type of place where he could rent Civil War costumes. There is a bit of heartache for a lost opportunity. This isn’t like one of those cool things I hear about that I missed out on years before I moved here. I had plenty of chances to wander into the store and get an eyeball full of costumes and associated relics. It feels like a here one day gone the next kind of thing. It’s sad to go from seeing that store, go from colorful and offbeat front window decorations to a blank and empty store front.

If there’s any lesson it has to be not to put off checking places out. I could probably make a list of other places that I’d like to see but I’ve delayed visiting for various reasons. I tell myself I don’t have time or offer up other excuses. I’ll be filled with even more regret if I end up noticing another business gone under that I never bothered to visit.

Here’s Marci’s report on Fabric World that is the next best thing to going there which you can no longer do any more. Scroll down to the March 31, 2015 post. Photos too!:

http://sewingwithcupcake.blogspot.com

Check out yelp reviews, many positive to get another sense of the Fabric World experience:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/fabric-world-portland

Many one star Yelp reviews about Hollywood Costumers which have a charm all their own if you’re into that:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/hollywood-costumers-portland

Cosmic Bowling

April 30, 2015June 22, 2017Leave a comment

The center of every neighborhood should revolve around a bowling alley. It’s a place where people meet, chat, catch up and then throw heavy balls at wooden pins and listen to the sound they make as they hit the polished floor that adds spin to the bowling balls that are hurled down the long alley towards the pins. The cycle would repeat itself until the bowling alley was closed for the night and everyone would go home to get ready for the next day’s work and the following evening’s bowling and visiting with neighbors. But bowling is not such a neighborly activity anymore. It may be a dying sport. I’ve yet to read the book Bowling Alone. It’s an older book that, as I recall, summed up the underlying story of what’s going with humanity and bowling. The Kenton neighborhood used to have a bowling alley that now houses the Disjecta Arts Center. We lost our lanes when they moved up the street to new digs and became Interstate Lanes.

I’ve long admired the simple yet cosmically inspired, with a slight psychedelic twist, external decoration that can be seen in a mural on the building, the sign post, entryway paint job and strips of neon. Sure the paint may be peeling off the outside walls and I’ve heard a rumor that the bowling alley may close but I’m hopeful it will stay open if only because there are now too few places to bowl left in the area.

The entry way has a multicolored picture of what looks like the evolutionary stages of upright bowling. It could also be seen as group of bowlers who like to bowl together–especially close.

The sign post does it right. Somehow a conglomeration of metal stripes and shields supports a sign that creates a visual pun by replacing letters with bowling equipment. Regardless of how aged it looks, it all seems so classy, clever and cool.

The coup de grace, pardon my French, is the giant mural on the side of the bowling alley that hasn’t totally succumbed to vandals. It’s where things get cosmic. I see intergalactic bowling in space. This occurred to me because the round object at the lower edge of the picture looks like a planet. I image Aliens being the ones to keep the sport of bowling popular. This would probably be because they would enjoy smoking and drinking PBR which seems as much a part of the game as the game itself. The mural is a thing of beauty with a slight marring from an errant spray can nozzle. I can only suggest a double dose of cosmic bowling which would entail staring at the mural and then actually doing some actual cosmic bowling resulting in more of a trip than just going to Interstate Lanes.

Trollarium of Schofield

April 24, 2015April 9, 20222 Comments

It was Ronna Craig, degreed in anthropology and with an intuition that someone or thing had taken refuge in the hollow at the bottom of a giant tree, who I would say made the discovery of the Trollarium of Schofield. All awkward sentences aside, walking down North Fenwick Ave on a Saturday morning Ronna made a beeline to a cave like indention in a tree at the corner of North Fenwick Ave and North Schofield St. She seemed to know she’d find something where I would never think to look. The troll sat in the hollow with a couple of plastic friends and a rabbit. We took brief glances not wishing to disturb the troll in his habitat.

There was never any debate between us, although others might be able to detect gnome character traits in the troll’s features—regardless Trollarium flows off the tongue better. They managed to accept my brief manic, paparazzi impersonation when I returned later with a camera to document their living quarters in an attempt to publicize and somehow profit from their lifestyle. We’ll let them all live in peace for now. No need to concern ourselves with whether they’re getting mail delivery or paying taxes. There’s never been much of a Welcome Wagon in this neighborhood so there’s no one to bother them. This discovery is so low-key that it’s quite conceivable that the Trollarium of Schofield will exist in quiet obscurity. I can only add: Squat as long as you like Mr. Troll, hang out with your friends and enjoy your tree as long as it continues to stand tall.

Troll friend: shirtless, plastic hunk-guy.

Another of the various hangers-on with Mr. Troll.

Center of the Known Creative Universe

April 22, 2015April 9, 20221 Comment

If abducted by aliens and told to take them to the creative hub or nerve center of Portland, I’d head over to the corner of N. Albina Ave and N. Sumner St. (Sorry W&K.) On one side of the street you have Mississippi Records, the other Cherry Sprout Produce. It’s like a lightning bolt hit smack in this area and supercharged it with a heavy dose of ability to channel creative expression. You’ll find it in the ideas about creativity and self-expression and attitude that’s amplified within the walls of Mississippi Records with an art museum, the Portland Museum of Modern Art, in the basement. Last time we visited the record store and art museum we headed over to Cherry Sprout Produce across the street. Sure it’s a grocery store but it has a whole different approach. That day was sunny, there was art on the walls and it felt good to be buying food in that atmosphere. The store’s sound system was playing better music than I heard at Mississippi Records. It sounded fresh, yet vintage–psychedelic garage rock with guitar solos leaping out of the speakers.

The telephone pole in this section of town marks the spot where creative energy seems to flow the highest. Yes, right into the street. It had multiple colorful discs on it. I worshipped the crazy colors and decorations. I think this would make the aliens smile too. It took me a while to realize I was looking at repurposed records which makes sense since Mississippi Records sells vinyl.

Insane, weird, impressive culture radiates out of these two establishments. I’m surprised the powers that be haven’t seeded the clouds in an attempt to wash it all away. If the aliens said take me to your leader I’d try to track down Eric Isaacson, Mississippi Record’s head honcho. He’d probably think that was too weird for him but look at this upcoming film from the screening series he’s organized at the Hollywood Theatre. It’s a movie called The Secret Life of Plants about psychobotany followed up by a slide show (winningly old school!) about the concept of “Ecstatic Truth.” This is happening Thursday, April 23 at 7:30pm so get a move on it. Expect to see the front row full of beaming aliens. It’s so unassuming, yet mind blowing. Pardon me, I have to go write my Alien Abduction novel now.

It’s all happening here.

420 Special

April 20, 2015April 9, 2022Leave a comment

Whatever you consider the significance of this date to be, I hope you celebrate it as you see fit. Next year’s 420 holiday will either be an all points epic blaze out or another day in paradise once marijuana is legalized in the state of Oregon on July 1st. It won’t be long before the City of Portland is shrouded in a haze of pot smoke.

Meanwhile I experienced this mildly hallucinogenic flyer promoting paraphernalia needed to commemorate the April 20th date know to some as 420 Day. It seems like the poster was much brighter when I first saw it. It may well have been a shade of green that popped on a gray day. The appeal for me is the blast of squiggles and smudges encircled by some wormy things that all seem to pulsate and spin around the sparkly glass water pipe in the center of the picture. Stare long enough at the flyer and a contact high seems imminnent. In the meantime celebrate 420 Day anyway you see fit using this image as inspiration.

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