The American Apartment building (1911) on the corner of NW 21st and Johnson.

We lived there in the early to mid 1990s (in the apartment just below the second row of bays on the front of the building). Drunken partiers would stop beneath our window on weekend nights after closing time to have arguments.

When we moved in, the building across the street that now houses the City Market was a closed storefront that had sold artificial limbs. Mayor Vera Katz lived across the street from us in a Victorian house. Music Millennium and Quality Pie were still on 23rd. Durst's Thriftway (now a Trader Joe's) and the Stadium Fred Meyer were our primary grocery stores, but that did not rule out visits to the Northrup Food Center, ran by an elderly couple who smoked at the cash register all hours of the day under flickering florescent lights. The building that houses Wildwood was an office that had a giant philodendron plant which wrapped around the entire inside of the building. After it closed, the plant was there for years, brooding in silence like something out of Little Shop of Horrors.

One morning we woke to our bed moving back and forth, like we were eggs sliding in a frying pan, to the sound of a mountain of bricks grinding up against each other. When the "Spring Break Quake" finally ended, we joined the rest of our semi-clad neighbors standing at the window, wide eyed, as hundreds of car alarms blared from every direction.

We moved just before the American was converted to condos. The fact that we no longer lived in the McMenamins triangle (bounded by the Mission Theater, the Blue Moon and the Pub and Pool) was alone enough to allow us to make our first house payments.

Catalina View, with a dead used car lot.

The boundary between Long Beach and Signal Hill runs right down the center of the Pacific Coast Highway at the intersection with Orizaba street. Facing off like sentries, the Long Beach Inn and the Signal Hill Motel mark their respective sides of the line. As part of California State Route #1, the Pacific Coast Highway still shows the hallmarks of the automobile age: billboards, service stations, used car lots and motels.




The Catalina View Motel (there is just enough elevation to make that possible on a clear day) and neighboring Colorado Motel, with its sign promising Color TV, are well maintained and painted cheerfully bright. They look cozy and nostalgic, perfect subjects for photography.





It is the dead used car lot next store to the Catalina View that draws me in though with questions.






How long ago did it close? Why is it vacant when others nearby thrive. Why were the light hoods painted black? Who spray painted USA on the ground?


















And are the Aragon attached townhouses really coming soon?

Favorite Photographs from 2009

2009 was played close to home. As Ian's arrival approached, my miles away from home decreased in inverse proportion. Except for Seattle, a trip to Arizona and a visit to Port Townsend after Ian was born, 2009 was spent in Portland.

Photography wise, I am happy to return to some black and white after laying it aside during the conversion to digital. Setting the Canon EOS Xsi to monochrome gets much better results than merely draining out color saturation with Photoshop Elements. There is still much to learn on this front. Perhaps next year a wider angle lens is also in order.

The selection below follows last years template, with a few pictures in excess of the traditional ten. (Click on photos to expand..)





The Fecheimer & White Building, Skidmore Oldtown District, Portland Oregon. January 15 2009.

Cast-iron allowed Portland to go from a wooden side-walked frontier town to Pacific Northwest's first metropolitan center, without the large amounts of artisans and stone workers it would have taken using traditional methods. Physical location aside, this is where Portland's uniqueness began.






Jill, Hotel Vintage Park, Seattle Washington, January 25 2009.

A couple of weeks free from morning sickness was a good reason to spend a weekend in Seattle.







Parking garage, Seattle Washington, January 25 2009.








Bath tubs in Rejuvenation's back lot. Portland Oregon, February 14 2009.







Hiway Host Motel, Main Street, Mesa Arizona, March 14 2009.

Bright Arizona light, highs in the seventies and a roadside stretch of old motels!








Union Pacific GP-38-2 #522, the former UP 2022 built in April 1974 approaches the Steel Bridge, Portland Oregon. April 5 2009.

What little railroad photography I did tended to be local. Riding my bike gave me plenty of chances to photograph the the transfer run between Albina and Lake yards. The train is a favorite of mine because it is often powered by some of Union Pacific's original GP-38-2 units, unsung regional stalwarts since the presidency of Richard Nixon.








Southern Pacific #4449 departs Union Station at the beginning of a cross country journey. Portland Oregon, July 3 2009.

Usually when I photograph steam locomotives, I try and remove as much evidence of the present as possible, an attempt at timelessness. For this picture I decided to fully embrace the anachronism of steam power in the twenty-first century head on by including Portland's modern skyline and condominiums built on the site of rail yards.









Ian, July 30 2009.

The big day! After a spectacularly loud debut, Ian rests on a heating pad in the recovery room. This is probably his first yawn.








Neon North Portland- the Westerner Motel, Interstate Avenue, Portland Oregon. August 15 2009.

Taken for Illuminating Interstate on Cafe Unknown.








Point Wilson lighthouse near Port Townsend Washington, October 10 2009.

Almost a year to the day that we were last at Port Townsend, we returned for our first trip with Ian.








Union Station phone booths. Portland Oregon, December 6 2009.








Ian, happy to have mastered the art of the roll-over. December 16 2009.








The Coelancanth: Third and Oak, Portland Oregon, December 28 2009.

The Bishop's House, Cameron's Books, the Golden Dragon and the Portland Outdoor Store; like the thought to be extinct Coelacanth fish, the block bounded by Third, Second, Oak and Stark seems outside of time. Next year I plan to write a piece that will show the glacial but steady change on the block.

Connections

The announcement that Tucson Arizona has placed an order for seven streetcars from Oregon Iron Works is another significant step in the establishment of the Portland region as the leader in a new American streetcar manufacturing industry. Cincinnati, Houston, Denver, Salt Lake City and Charlotte are known to be considering following suite, but another recent news story has implications that, if pursued, could bring Portland's modern streetcars forefront on the national stage.





On May 24th, New York City began a pilot project that removed automobile traffic through Times Square on Broadway between 47th and 42nd streets, and again at Herald Square between 35th and 33rd, to form large pedestrian plazas. It creates an opening for a modern streetcar line that would enhance the pedestrian experience at the same time maintaining through traffic on the Great White Way.

A streetcar line added to the mix, say from 47th to 33rd, would serve both as a pedestrian circulator within the plazas and as a connector between Times and Herald Squares. A new, clean surface transportation option would emerge in the center of Manhattan. To do it, two-way traffic would have to be restored on the isolated portion of Broadway, bracketed by the plazas between 42nd and 35th.

It could be the start of something much larger. Additional improvements, already planned, include separate bike lanes and pedestrian promenades between Columbia Circle at 59th and a new plaza at 23rd. They hint that changes have only started on Broadway and that the street, always outside the grid, has a very different future than its conforming neighbors. It's easy to foresee a super-Ramblas between Central and Battery parks. Tied together by a modern streetcar line, it would be the world's ultimate green boulevard.

I know where they can get the streetcars.



The prototype Oregon Iron Works streetcar, the first modern streetcar built in the United States, at the Portland Streetcar's shop complex where it has joined the 10 Czech built cars in the fleet. May 31 2009.




Third Avenue Railway car #562 on the Broadway Line through Times Square in 1946. A 1930's edict by Mayor LaGaurdia's administration stipulated that buses would replace streetcars by 1960. No new streetcars were purchased by the Third Avenue Railway thereafter. Ironically, Portland's 1932 order of Brill-built streetcars, nicknamed "the Broadway cars" for the line of their initial use, were more modern than anything that ever ran on its much larger namesake.

Third Avenue Railway's Broadway line intersected with short, busy "crosstown" lines that crossed Manhattan like rungs on a ladder at 42nd, 59th, 125th, 138th, 149th, 163rd, 167th, 180th and 207th Streets. It was abandoned in 1948, the same year as Portland's Broadway line.

Twitter 1915

Dorothy S. We are expecting a friend to dine here with us this evening.
July 11 1915 4:30 PM from postcard.





A proto-tweet! (59 characters) sent by Dorothy S. from Portland Oregon's Hotel Multnomah to Miss Ertie Baily, 1311 Somerset Ave, Windber Pennsylvania on July 11 1915 at 4:30 in the afternoon.

Klamath Falls Oregon, June 26 1927

CARNIVAL PIGMY DIES

King Dodo Dies in Show Tent at Klamath Falls.

KLAMATH FALLS , Or June 26 - The king is dead! And now there is no king. The monarch in question was King Dodo, a pygmy 19 inches tall and 56 years old. He died last night in the arms of the sword swallower under the big top of a carnival company showing here. He was stricken just as the show was starting.

King Dodo, whos real name was John Taylor, 56, had been a side-show attraction all his life. His home was in Los Angeles and his body will be sent there for burial.

-Clipping from an unknown newspaper dated June 27 1927, found in a book.

What Happened in Vegas...

From the back of this postcard, dated November 2nd 1951:

The new Thunderbird Hotel, five minutes from the heart of Las Vegas, Nevada, Americas newest and most luxurious desert hotel, a miracle of modern comfort in the heart of the scenic west.

"Dear Greta and Al:
We arrived home last night after a two days business trip to Las Vegas. Stopped at this very modern- and swank hotel and night club- but Larry was all business for the bank. We were well shocked and shaken by the Atomic Bomb Blast yesterday at 7:20 am before we left the hotel. Saw the cloud later in the sky. The weather was ideal in the desert..."