Thorburn and Gilham

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You have to be watching very carefully to know when you cross from one street to the other here, because it won't seem like you have changed from one street to another at all.

SE Thorburn St and SE Gilham Av serve one main purpose in the Portland traffic greater-scheme-of-things: channelling traffic from E Burnside St at a point just east of E 67th Av around the shoulder of Mount Tabor and down through Montavilla on the Stark-Washington couplet. Though one is technically an avenue and the other a street, due to their layout, which respects the topography of that side of the mountain in order to have terraces for salable housing lots, they meet at such an acute angle that if it was any smaller they'd be parallel streets.

At any rate, SE Gilham Av is the most advantageous connection to Thorburn east of Gilham which goes from a 2-lane neighborhood street with speedbumps collecting traffic from Stark west of Mount Tabor to a four-lane boulevard after Gilham merges in. There are an annoying lack of of visual cues to hint to the driver they're actually on a different street now, reinforced by the way the grading directs traffic.

Long story short, if you want to just get to Montavilla off East Burnside, just go with the flow. If you want to know which street you're actually on, look sharp; there are weathered signs hiding in the foliage.

Stark Street, Montavilla

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Another one of those tight zoom shots I love doing so much because they make me think telephoto. 

This is looking down SE Stark Street into downtown Montavilla. The hillside ahead is the north shoulder of Mount Tabor.

There's an interesting thing I found out about Mount Tabor recently. Apparently there's a standard for height below which a peak will not be named "Mount" by whatever geographic nomenclature authority applies (a board under the aegis of the USGS, I think) and Mount Tabor does not meet that standard. However, since generations of Oregonians have called in Mount Tabor, the history of the name establishes the right. 

The name Montavilla was inspired by Mount Tabor, but in an indirect way according to the book Portland's Streetcar Lines, published in 2010 by Richard Thompson. The community was named Mount Tabor Village, originally, but signage of the first streetcar lines abbreviated this Mt. Ta. Villa. Over time this evolved into Montavilla as the coinage grew popular. 

The streetcar line died long ago. Its cultural rubric child, however, has never been stronger. 

Also, at 76th and SE Stark, you'll find Mr. Plywood. Best urban lumber store ever. Just take my word for that.

Montavilla Sunday Morning

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Nothing much here, just Stark Street looking west from SE 80th taking advantage of the deserted Sunday morning streets and a scrunchy viewing angle to get a really cool picture of storefronts that could be in any town ... large or small, Portland or elsewhere.

Yes, we still have pandemic going on, new CDC guidance notwithstanding, but for being the big town it is, parts of Portland can be surprisingly deserted on any given Sunday morning because that, too, is how we are here.

Stark Street, Downtown Montavilla, April 2021

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This is a picture I've taken before but I was in the right spot today, so I took it again. 

This was part of me and the Brown Eyed Girl's sojourn to get her her 2nd Pfizer Covid vaccine dose, amongst other things. I did a bunch of walking. And, in the afterglow of known my spouse is fully vaccinated, and all the errands are run, I have about 160 photos taken on the day ... the most productive in a while.

I think the farthest one can see here at this angle is about SE 92nd Avenue; this was taken where Stark and Washington devolve from SE Thorburn Street at abut SE 74th. So, about a mile.

More, as usual to come. Also a few more views of Rocky Butte. 

Mill Ends Park 2 Has A Cottage Now

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So, at that gore point, where Southeast Thorburn Street devolves into Southeast Stark and Washington (or where Southeast Stark and Washington unite to become Thorburn, depending on ones' direction of travel, philosophy, or some mixture of the two), I wrote of the continuing presence of a 'guerilla' park emulating the virtues of Portland's world-famous Mill Ends Park ... Mill Ends Park 2.

There've been developments. A development, to be specific.

Some blithe spirit has graced the comma-shaped traffic island with a small, brightly painted hut for whatever fae denizens should be conceived to be living there. Some brightly and intricately painted stones, which defined a path from the sign to the hut but have now been scattered about by the elements are also there.

It's interesting that whoever has temporal suzerainty over this patch of public way has been cool about it. It existed for some days before the coronavirus came as an unwelcome guest and didn't get taken down immediately; presumably whoever is In Control There thought it rather delightful along with the rest of us.

Well, this last week, the small hut and the stone-limned path showed up. Unlike the sine qua non version in the median of Southwest Naito Parkway at the foot of Taylor Street downtown, there is no backstory to it. Some miniature developer kind of bashed it in there, and since we don't have a generation of leprechauns to provide a backstory, one could perhaps assume that it's a faery houseshare, a elfin AirBNB, perhaps.

They probably didn't appreciate me snapping pictures uninvited without so much as a "how d'you do", but sometimes one must take the risks. It must be said that I, too, have affection, so that must be holding me in some kind of advantageous stead.

And, for those who are wondering, no, I don't know what the rates are. You're on your own there, pilgrims.

Another Look Down SE Stark Into Downtown Montavilla, PDX

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I took another one of these pictures. I just like 'em, I guess. Looking east down Southeast Stark into the Montavilla business district from the gore point where Thorburn Street devolves into the Stark/Washington couplet east of Mount Tabor.

I just like 'em. Also, it leads into the next missive.

Which happens right after this one.

Mill Ends Park 2, Side of Olivia

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So, to show that not everything in these times of dexterity are dismal, I noted a thing that was meant to be temporary was still there and not in my photo library yet, so I went and got it, and a guest star besides.

Mill Ends Park is one of the most Portlandest things that ever Portlanded in Portland. Originally a post hole, it was first cared for by a columnist for the late, great Oregon Journal newspaper whose home was, at the time, a very large, white, double-masted building that vaguely resembled an art deco cruise liner where Tom McCall Waterfront park is now. Dick Fagan populated it with leprechauns and named if after his column, and eventually the hole, in the median of what we now call SW Naito Parkway at the foot of Taylor Street, became a local legend and then an official city park.

A 2-foot wide city park.

And over time small plants would be there and people would arrange little figures of people and dinosaurs and such and it was all very kind and fun. But sometime, about two years ago, some chowderhead cut the small tree that was growing there, out. And we all found out and it became one of the most Portlandest stories that ever Portlanded in the media, and everyone had the sad about it.

Somehow, during that time, almost as though in response to the destruction, someone got the idea that  the west side of the Willamette shouldn't have all the fun. And thus, in an asphalt island in the gore point of where SE Thorburn Street, a main route around the shoulder of Mount Tabor feeding East Burnside Street traffic down into downtown Montavilla, split into the couplet of SE Stark and Washington streets there, someone placed two planters, a sign, and a wooden sword in a wooden stone, and we got this:

The sign, while it looks kinda official, is not; Portland Parks and Recreation have said as much. But they're good sports about it all, and haven't disturbed it, and neither has anyone else.

And here's the fair Olivia, alongside:

Mill Ends Park 2, and Olivia: both actual size.

And so it goes.

Plague Year Diary: The Academy Theater, Montavilla, PDX

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This is the Academy Theater, at about 78th and SE Stark, in downtown Montavilla. Most weeks would be 2nd-run movies and a retro classic.

They're just playing the retro classic TEMPORARILY CLOSED right now. Its run seems to be getting extended just a s'kosh.

Plague Year Diary: Deserted Stark Street, Montavilla, PDX

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Montavilla, for those who don't know, is an old-school eastern Portland neighborhood with a good deal of history. Like a number of them, it has what amounts to a business district; a stretch of SE Stark St going east from where SE Thorburn Street splits into the Stark-Washington couplet, at about SE 74th Avenue, to SE 82nd Avenue; about a half mile's of street. It's one of those Portland neighborhoods with a little downtown, so to say; a rather darling place that would serve as the cute undiscovered downtown of a small town anywhere in the Willamette Valley hinterland. And it's fairly bustling; cars parked all up and down the street, people going to and from the taverns at 80th and Stark and the lumber yard across the street; the cute bistro at 78th, the Lebanese restaurant there.

Here's what it looked like today, though, in this second (third) week of Covid-19:

The brow of Mount Tabor overlooks a very quiet place today.

And here below I go to the gore point of where Thorburn devolves into Stark and Washington, stand in the middle of the street with plenty of time to get out the way, and hit that zoom, hard.

The TriMet bus there in the mid-distance is stopping to pick up passengers at 82nd and Stark. The street loses clarity at about the I-205 overpass, which means I'm taking in about a mile's worth of Stark here.

But there is still a tourist attraction of a sort. I'll post about that in about two missives from now.

[#pdx] Photos on Sunday: Mr Plywood and Mount Hood From Downtown Montavilla

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Not too many photos on this edition of Photos on Sunday, because we had a real day of downtime. And, noting the way I feel right now, it was needed. 
But that's as may be. Today, The Wife™ needed a bit of board for a little thing she was trying to do to organize the closet, so we do what we usually do in these cases: we went to Mr. Plywood, in downtown Montavilla, at 76th and SE Stark. It's been in Portland a long, long time … I don't know what year it was founded in, but I remember the dryly-narrated commercials that Mike Falconer used to do back in the 70s. Since there are fewer and fewer of the good old local retailers that exist around here that did when I was a kid, we put a high importance on patronizing them. We do, after all, want to help them stay in business for as long as they can.

Mr Plywood's store is hard to miss. 7609 SE Stark Street, that's on Stark Street, on the north side, filling the whole block between 76th and 77th. You won't miss it, if only because it's big sign, made of the mascot, draws your attention.

Inside, it's your local lumber store … with an accent on the finished plywood sort of thing. Because, name.

Me and The Wife™ love it because the prices are good, the service is knowledgable, and if you stop in as a regular, they treat you like a friend. The Wife™ loves the access to materials. I love the free popcorn.

I've gone on in other venues about free popcorn at hardware and building supply stores. To this day, wife says I need some dowling or a cedar board, and my mouth starts watering.

The store's in two main sections; the upper part, where the cashier is, the aisles with building and wooodworking supplies, and the finished plywood. Rougher stuff is in the other half of the building, which is reached through the large door with these delightful signs over:

They love DIYers and I love those signs. And observing the proceedings in the upper room is the store's eponymous mascot … "Mr" Plywood.

In all his precise geometrical glory, he beams warmly to all who patronize.

But there something about him … those eyes …

Do you see they way they look? The way they seem to follow you across the room? The way they look not only at you … but into you? (cue theremin at this point. You may not want to, but you have to)

They bore into you in searing honesty … they are the abyss of building materials, and as you look into them, THEY LOOK INTO YOU!!!!! AAAAAAAUGH!!!!!!

Okay, now that I've turned a perfectly charming store logo into something you're afraid will meet you on the other side and chase you after death, let's move on! Mr Plywood is located in what I think of as 'downtown Montavilla'. Montavilla is the neighborhood on the east side of Mount Tabor from the rest of Portland, and begins pretty much at the toe of the mountain. It's main east-west axis is the one-way couplet of SE Stark and Washington Streets, from 76th to 82nd Avenues, where there are a flock of shops, a really nifty coffeehouse called the Bipartisan Cafe, and the best movie theatre on earth … The Academy.

For those who know me well, I'm about to go into another couple of photos where I further if possible, fetishize Mount Hood. I am what I am.

The mountain is visible from downtown Montavilla, and the best view is from the upper end, near SE 76th, in front of the Mr Plywood store. Taking the lessons in creating telephoto-style pictures a couple of missives ago, it quickly occurred to me that this was a chance to juxtapose the distant mountain with the human habiliment in the foreground. I remember seeing similar pictures taken of Mount Rainier from the Seattle suburbs when I was a kid, and they really had impact … impressions of them stayed with me to this day, and are playing across my mind as I write this. Here's what I came up with, and the result really pleases my aesthetic sense.

The real coup, I think, is the tall facade to The Academy, even though it blocks the view of a shoulder of the mountain, its intrusion into the scene makes it kind of a valuable statement. The above is cropping a zoomed-in photo, and this …

… is at a few levels of digital zoom, which I'm finding, the Canon S-100 handles with deftness.

And it's Mount Hood, Wy'east, which is its own justification.