Oh Dog, you Sleuth!

Rock N Rhonda.

A house that truly baffles me.

On Monday, I saw two things that freaked me out: Legends of The Superheroes Celebrity Roast and Banana slugs, fortunately not in the same place.

Found this at an estate sale on Saturday. This was one of those houses where they had saved EVERYTHING. There were piles of old greeting cards, school papers and even some wrapped xmas presents that looked really old and faded.

Jeremy found a brochure for a place called Steve’s Gay 90’s in Tacoma, WA. It looked like this this cross between Farrells and an old West whore house. I was ready to get in the car and drive up there that same day, but when I looked it up I found out it closed in 1977. Ugh.

A western wear store on McLoughlin.

There’s been so much talk about Burnside Bridgehead lately that I was surprised to read about Disjecta moving into the building directly across from the controversial site. It’s going to be a big gallery space for contemporary art, which is pretty exciting.

Today I learned about John Solie, who’s done some of the greatest illustration art I’ve ever seen, including movie posters, TV Guide covers and the classic romance novel cover artwork. I should seriously be a curator. Or I could just settle for stalker, since he lives on the Oregon coast.

I also heard rumblings about Buckman Pool re-opening.

Rainier, OR is super charming, perhaps it’s the poor-man’s Astoria. Speaking of which, the most heavenly Goonies-esque geekout fest is happening next week.

Rob alerted me to this mural, which sprung up a few weeks ago around the corner from my house. It’s very different from stuff I’ve seen around town.

And I may be freaking out about this for months to come: there are now two documentaries about William Eggleston!!!!

These sunny day photos are not indicative of what it’s been like here at all. I’m finally starting to see the true repercussions of what a fluke last year’s sunny/dry winter was all about.
But it’s not that bad. On my way to the movies tonight, it was hard not to notice how beautiful everything looked even though the entire city is deeply, deeply soggy.

A kind of Planet Of The Apes moment.

I got kinda obsessed last night with buying mystery boxes on ebay. Jeremy found a listing from a woman in Vancouver, WA who makes ‘mystery video tapes that she doesn’t even show her husband’ as well as selling mystery boxes. She also sells ‘u-pick-poses’ of herself, which is fascinating. Can’t find the link anymore.

Also, in an exhaustive internet search to find info about Bob Farrell (of Farrell’s restaurant fame), Jeremy came across the best Amazon reviewer ever.

Some places I see out of the corner of my eye seem so too good to be true at first glance I almost think they were created as some kind of trap. This bowling alley right next to a pizza parlor on McLoughlin is a perfect example.

In the bowling alley, there’s a hotline to order pizza next door. There’s a note by the phone telling you to specify which lane you’re at.

The inside appears to have gotten a serious overhaul probably during the nineties, but it’s extravagantly zany. It’s a Chuck E. Cheese-style place full of arcade games and birthday parties.

Exciting news: It turns out Chris Ware’s Lost Buildings is getting a wide release in September and will only cost $20 (thanks, Megan W).

Nob Hill pharmacy on NW 21st and Glisan is closing after being around for over a hundred years. Since a lot of people have already written about it, I won’t retread the story again, except to say I spoke to one of the owners who was very nice and seemed stoic about the whole closing down. They’ve donated a good chunk of their stuff to the Oregon Historical Society, but a lot of cool stuff is still for sale. It’s worth checking out because it’s incredible inside and will soon be gutted.

This was probably one of the most shockingly intact places I’ve seen in town since I moved here. Especially when you consider how the neighborhood it’s in has been gentrified to the brink of utter blandness, which always involves extortionate property rentals (And as an aside: because I wondered the same thing about Grand Central Bowl, which was around forever before closing… is how can you have a small business at the same location forever and never buy the property? I know I don’t know anything about running a small business, but still…).

Fairley’s pharmacy on Sandy still gets my vote for being the most intact drugstore in town because they have a soda fountain that serves phosphates. Nob Hill ripped their fountain out in the fifties to make space to sell Hallmark cards. Otherwise, it sounded like the place hadn’t seen a serious remodeling since the 1940’s.

One of my first impressions of moving to Portland was all the green-painted peg board I saw everywhere. It’s so beautiful. I never like it as much when I see white, but usually it’s that institutional green. I also really dug all the handmade signs at Nob Hill. When I was there four months ago, it seemed like there was a lot more.

The very gracious owner let me have this beautiful sign.

If you live in Portland, you have to get this book: Portland Hill Walks. So far, I’ve only done one and a half walks, the one around OHSU and Mount Tabor. It’s changed the way I think about the city. It’s funny how you see the hills that practically circle the city every day but almost never ever go up there. At least I don’t.

The book has twenty walks in it so you could spend a year or two covering all of them if you followed my plan, which is only to do it when the weather is nice.