Oh Dog, you Sleuth!

I figured I’ll get out all my paranoia and disappointment about Portland’s increasing downward spiral in one entry, so I don’t spin off in a permanent state of rage. Maybe.
Here’s the Washington-Monroe H.S. on Stark, the first high school built on the east side. The school has been boarded up as long as I’ve lived here and I’ve read that it might get turned into a community center. It’s one of the biggest open spaces in Buckman.

Just, someone, promise me: no McMenamins. This site offers one of the biggest opportunities to stop thrashing Buckman with crappy condos, parking lots and a total disregard for it’s amazing dense neighborhoods full of cool buildings.
Here’s why I’m worried:

Just around the corner on Morrison is this monstrosity, the old Sue Bee Market (which had a great sign). This thing has been sitting empty for months. At first, they were promising a couple of gourmet markets that theoretically could do well in this part of town. But even if they open a puppydog/fireworks/toy factory, I’m still going to hate this building, which sticks out amongst all the hundred year old buildings that surround it. Hopefully, it’s not too late to rip the whole thing down.

This is an AIDS hospice on my street, which is getting demolished to build a bigger facility. The statement from the developers says they are barely increasing the bed capacity, but still need to knock down every tree for (you guessed it) a bigger parking lot. Barf.

Also, the Burnside Bridgehead got awarded to the wrong people.

I guess this is all part of the natural progression of living anywhere long enough: appreciation turns into vigilante psychosis. It just seems like a lot of really painful development decisions have gone down or are going to in the next few years. What’s next, going ahead with plans to build the Mt. Hood freeway through the SE? I suppose it has something to do with out of control real estate inflation and Portland’s expansion, which would be okay if everything new wasn’t so completely terrible.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be looking at my abandoned Japanese architecture.

This nice garden on 34th and Stark is probably going to be bulldozed to make a parking lot for the sleazy upgrade of the St. Joseph’s senior residence. I actually went to a neighborhood meeting last week and heard the details all hashed out. It was pretty depressing overall, but also somewhat hopeful in a way, since the developers have been trying to destroy this corner of the neighborhood for ten years. The neighborhood group seemed really legally/politically savvy about the whole thing, even though the outcome looks bad.

This building, which spans from 30th to 32nd (ish) is also supposed to come down. I haven’t done my research, but it’s obviously not the original thing on this site, which has been called St. Joseph’s (I think) for at least a 100 years. It’s not that great, but way better than the ugly suburban shed they want to throw up. I thought the most psychotic twist was that the developers want to rip down almost all the trees on the property. Their stated reasoning is that it will make it seem more urban to have the building closer to the sidewalk, which it is already and doesn’t have to be any closer since it’s a fucking institution for the elderly who aren’t going anywhere and not a store or restaurant, where, yes, ideally, you don’t want to walk across a football field sized parking lot in the inner city.
But probably the sleaziest thing is that they want to call the new facility ‘Laurelhurst Village’, even though it’s in Sunnyside, so it sounds more bling. Assholes.

I got to use a different camera this weekend. I assumed everything was going to come back out of focus and under exposed, so I stayed in a ten block radius of the house to not tempt fate.
Here’s the Avalon.

Laurelhurst theater.

The market on Belmont and 38th.

Are you living in a sad city? And in what psychotic parallel universe is Baton Rouge, LA one of the happiest places on Earth?

Seems like the Buckman Pool is kaput after what was described as ’serious leaks’. The whole situation sounds awfully suspicious in light of the city wanting to close it forever. The people in the neighborhood have been fighting to keep it open, so this was probably the best excuse to pull the plug in the face of opposition. I was so bummed out to hear this since I just discovered the pool and couldn’t believe how nice it was. It was similar to discovering Portland’s amazing library system, which goes out and buys the expensive art books I can’t afford and then lets me borrow them, which no other town I’ve lived in does.
Hopefully, one day they’ll build a bigger and better pool. Looking at the Parks site, I realized my neighborhood’s pool was a lot shabbier than can be found around the city. But considering how broke this town is, it might be a long time coming.

I’ve been wondering about this building for a year now. It’s on MLK near Queen of Sheba. During the day, it just looks like a dead bank. But at night sometimes it’s lit up and you can see the hundreds of large oil paintings. It seemed really out of place and I started to imagine this is what was going on inside.
I finally got the courage to figure it out, but there’s a heavy steal shutter on the front door and the windows are too grimy to look through. But the back door was open.
Inside there were three older gentlemen sitting behind the bank counter eating lunch. They said the place hadn’t been a bank in years and used to be a ‘financial institution’ (leaving things very vague). Also, the paintings were not for sale and no business currently transpired there. The guys looked like they were retired. And for some reason they let me take some pictures.

Does anyone have any theories?

Take a second to save Buckman pool.

It used to be my fantasy to find an old photo album in a thrift store. Now I seem to come across them more often, so I’ve gotten a little picky. This one today I picked up at an estate sale got me really excited.
I love how back in the day, people saved their postcards in their albums along with the pictures. It makes perfect sense when you think about it. This book was the work of Vern and Becky, who traveled all over the US in the early seventies in their camper. I’m also kind of jealous that their polaroids looks a lot better than mine.

I think I’ve become such a photo album snob because eventually you get really bored by how lousy people’s pictures are. This was clearly not the case with Vern and Becky. I had to take the book apart to scan these shots, but maybe I’ll frame this page. I love how they did the church in summer and winter.

I didn’t notice this when I was first flipping through it. And when I saw it, my eyes kind of bugged out.

Seriously, when are we partying at the Safari? Estacada is not that far away.

At a plant nursery last week, I was trying to convince Jeremy to buy a redwood sapling for in front of the house in hopes that one day I could drive a car through it.

I pixelated their phone number because I don’t want anybody else calling them and stealing my Olive Garden thunder (even though it’s a filthy restaurant in every way [ed. note: Jeremy just pointed out that the gift certificate was probably given to the people who made this book {Judd and Thelma?} and are thus not 'Vern and Becky' . Sigh. But this does increase my chances of being taken out to Olive Garden since it was clearly not redeemed and the givers are potentially younger]). Vern and Becky seem pretty old in 70/71, so I’m a little worried that they’re not alive thirty five years later. I also like how this offer is worded like it was written by Smoove B.

Looking forward to Chain.

No races the day I popped in, but there was some depressing OTB action.

So there’s some new ‘books’ in the margin to the right. Let me know if they download really slow on your (various) computers. No preload makes it seem to take longer, I think. Here’s a sample of the first page of each if they don’t want to open:

This guy’s web design skills make me feel like a total hack.

On the main drag in Longview, Washington, which was kind of a sorry affair these days since all the big boxes have set up shop a few miles away.

Does anybody reading this know how to make a simple Flash percent pre-loader? I would be so grateful.

I thought it would be a hoot while I was driving out on Highway 30 taking pictures, to check out the park at Trojan. This is where Homer works (if there’s anyone left out there who hasn’t made the Springfield/Portland connection).
I’d read in the WW, that the closed nuclear reactor now sports a park (!!!) on the premise, which seemed too surreal to me. Of course when I got there, the park was closed (sign said re-opening Memorial Day) and the place was earily (natch) quiet. And I was almost too scared to breathe. How can you not be when there’s a cooling tower less than a football field away?
But why a park… there??? Highway 30 is kind of ghetto and industrial, but this being Oregon, still beautiful and lush and green. In other words, who goes to this park?

Of course, you would get so many points for being cool if you had a party in that park.

Found these on the weekend at a store Jeremy and I always check out when we hopelessly look for furniture and rugs. I think these were there the whole time, but hanging really, really high. They’re from an old movie theater in Washington and are hand-lettered.

Dinner at Bill’s Steakhouse way out on Sandy. From the outside it looks like the whole place was brutally remodeled in 1990, but it was actually only the facade and the inside looked similar to the photographs of the place from 1951.

The less said about the food, the better…

But these 3-D pictures hanging over the booths were really cool.

They had dinner service in the bar as well.

It was even darker and crazier in this side with ancient mirror/damask wallpaper (nice), but I think we made the right choice by avoiding this side because it was pretty stinky, in a ‘5 billion Pall Malls smoked’ kind of way.

Donna’s lodge is coming along nicely.

Once she hangs up the antlers, it will be pretty amazing.