Gone from Burnside. Car lot.

When Matt lived in Southeast off of Sandy, and I lived downtown I used to walk to his house on a regular basis, mostly crossing the Burnside Bridge.  Today I had to run an errand after school and it was quicker to walk back.  So I noticed that the used car lot at the corner of Burnside and MLK has gone away.  I wonder when that happened?

It's winter. I don't care what the calendar says.

This much rain, this cold?  You are looking at full-on winter in Portland Oregon.

A bit of downtown.

This is the window of John Helmer, Haberdasher, where I would purchase all my hats, were I of the male persuasion.

But mostly I took these pictures so I could remember these great candy cane  hanging ornaments.

While I was waiting on friend, I watched this ballerina get her photo taken.

Afternoon walk on N. Mississippi

I took a walk up Mississippi to my volunteer shift at the library.  Here are a few things I saw.

Supposedly, if this billboard is to be believed, this very skinny building will be constructed.  I find it interesting because the land to the right of the supposed building is the large expanse of open space where the ghost stairs I documented in this post. Apparently this piece of land was separate from the ghost stairs land.

I'm quite glad I wasn't sitting under this deck/porch/cover when it collapsed.

That post just snapped.  I'm betting this wasn't built to code.

Really pretty art on the side of a building.

Full picture.

5th Ave Cinema

Despite living downtown and in close-in Southwest for a number of years before I moved to North Portland, I never made it to 5th Avenue Cinemas.  This is the movie theater on the PSU campus that I'm guessing is run by students.  They show an eclectic mix of films (aside from Mala Noche, Gremlens was playing) weekly on Fridays, Saturdays and Sunday afternoons.  Their windows display the films screened during the quarter.

A display in the theater.

The lobby.  When you pay your admission, you get free popcorn!  There are also drinks and candy for sale.

A peek at the screen.

Should you need to take notes, the chairs have desks.

This was a special screening with special people in attendance. There's Walt Curtis on the left, with Satryicon bouncer Bruno and the nice guy who introduced them.  Walt Curtis wrote the chapbook that became the movie Mala Noche.  I'm unclear why Bruno was there.  You can read an interview that the Willamette Week did with Mr. Curtis by clicking here.  The article pretty much accurately captures what it was like during the question and answer session after the movie.

Nice detail

Aside from the striped awnings, which are great, I loved the wrought iron details on the porch of this house.  I've not been to New Orleans, but I imagine this to be a very NOLA house.

Grabbing a photo of this house while I can.

I've always liked this cheery little house on Interstate, one block north of Killingsworth.  I'm a fan of houses that have most of their yard in front of them. However the "zoned RH-D" sign in the front yard tells me this fellow is not long for this world.  The shadow encroaching on the house is a multi-story mixed-use building of condos that went in a few years ago. Which means someone is going to want to put three or more townhouses on this lot.

Pictures from my "snow" day.

It started as a two-hour delay.  Here are the three ways I'm informed of school delays and closures:  via text message, via the app FlashAlert and via email.

The two hour delay turned into a full day off because of worsening conditions.

Fine by me.  I used the time to cut out the Lined Swedish Shade I'm working on for my bedroom.  You can see I had a good helper.

Here is the back part of the shade.  It might be familiar to you as it was material left over from my uniform shirt/dress.  I have blackout curtain fabric on top of the blue.

Here is what it will look like when I get it all sewed together, though right now I've just folded the blue over the top of the bird fabric.  I love this fabric. It's from Ikea.  My favorite two birds are the blue and the orange.  I like to think Matt is the blue one (his favorite color) and I'm the orange one (my favorite color.)  Aren't we cute, sitting there talking?

I met Tiffany downtown for a drink--plans we had for "after school" on Thursday.  We just shifted them to "after snow day" instead.  

On the way back I took this picture of drippy ice.  The roads were fine, though.

Good job, wind!

Just last week I noticed that the same billboard has been up since at least June 6, when I wrote this blog post.  "What we need is a good windstorm to scour that right off the billboard." I thought to myself.  

And the wind did provide.

I can't help but think I made this urban farm happen.

There has been an empty lot between the Head Start/Apartments on the left and the beautiful (though boring colored) house on the right since before I moved to the neighborhood in 2007.

I used to walk by and imagine buying the property, building a tiny house and having a huge garden.  Then the foursquare house went up for sale and imaged buying it and the empty lot and living in the beautiful house with a large garden.  That house sold and then the small house that backs the lot went up for sale.  I imaged buying it and the large lot and having a small house with a huge garden.

And all these years after imagining this, guess what has popped up on this lot?

They've built small sheds to store things in, and raised beds for growing.  The small house that backed onto the lot was sold and ripped down, apartments replaced it.  The small house next door was also sold, ripped down and even larger apartments replaced it.

But here is my large lot, filled with a garden.  This picture shows the huge hoop house they built, so things can grow through the winter.

It's been a great addition to the neighborhood.

2 Days in Seattle campaign forgets who they are talking to.

The picture on the right?  Art from the Seattle Art Museum.  On the left?  The iconic Public Market sign.  In the middle?  The Seattle Sounders?  Who in Timbers Army Portland is going to travel to Seattle and root for the Sounders?

Price is firm.

$5.00 for the whole Max Train car, or just this bar?  Seems a good deal either way.  Who do I pay?

Comparison Contrast two houses on Belmont Street.

Waiting for the #15 bus, I got to looking at these two houses located on Belmont just off Cesar Chavez.  They seem to be the same house and presumably built the same time, so I thought it would be fun to do a comparison.  Plus, I get to geek out with Portland Maps.

 This is 3921 & 3923 SE Belmont.  It was built in 1908 and is a duplex. It has 2,169 square feet.  Both residences in the duplex are owned by a couple with an address in another part of the city so this is presumably a rental.  The couple purchased the house in 2001 for (get ready to clutch your hearts, real estate hunters of today) $132,000.  Portland Maps tells me that it also sold in 1992 for $59,000 and in 1991 for $42,500. It's current assessed value is $198,500 and its market value is $273,700.  There are some fun historic permits on file for plumbing inspections.

 This is 3927 and 3939 SE Belmont.  It is owned by a couple who live in the house, though I assume they rent out the second unit.  It was built one year earlier, in 1907, and is a tiny bit bigger at 2,171 sq feet. The couple bought the house in 2003 for (again, get ready to clutch your hearts) $47,800. The type of sale is listed as Bargain Sale and Deed and I don't know if that's why it was such a steal, selling for so much less than its neighbor.  The historic permits on file list Albertsons, Inc. as the owner in 1965.

 The upper story: you can see the type of siding and the roof which I would characterize as in good condition.

This one has shingled siding and what I would guess is a new roof.

Second story.  It looks like the windows have been replaced with newer vinyl-style.  You can also see the "peak" of the porch is placed to the right on this house. 

This house still has the old aluminum frame windows and the "peak" is placed further to the left on this house.

Here, our house has an open porch, probably retaining the same style as it was built with.

This house has an enclosed porch, which I am not a fan of.  They seem less pleasant to hang out on and they tend to become a place to stack things. 

One thing that interested me was that both houses have heavy 60s/70s era doors that don't match the rest of the house.

Based on this, I assumed that both houses were owned by the same owner some time in their past. But no!  Was there a traveling door-to-door door salesman with an irresistible pitch?

The carved wood, the dark stain, the brass mail slot!  Does not match!!!

It looks like these steps have been scraped.  Perhaps they are getting ready for a new coat of paint?

The steps on this house are not as wide.

These columns look as though they've been renovated at some point.

I would bet these are original.

Thus ends our comparison/contrast.

The end of Powell's 2, nee Powell's Technical Books

Once upon a time Powell's Technical Books was at the corner of NW Park and Couch in a big white brick building with a store cat named Fup. Time passed, Fup died of old age, things changed, Powell's Technical moved a few blocks north and became Powell's 2.  The white brick building was torn down to make way for student apartments and a coffee shop with incredibly slow service.  

Walking by today, I see that Powell's 2 has moved back to the mother ship, and so I bid goodbye to another piece in what was once an empire. Which will survive, of course, but in a different form than before.

Difficult to follow instructions.

I'm walking on the left-hand side of the street and the blue sign tells me to cross to the other side, because the sidewalk is closed.  But the other side of the street doesn't have any sidewalk access either. So I did what that guy is doing and walked in the road.  

I'm glad they are doing work on both the red brick building on the right and the one you can see on the left.  But I do need to walk on a sidewalk now and then.