This Picture Really Sucks

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This should go amongst one of the Portlandest pictures ever. For reference, this is facing westbound at the corner of NE Grand Avenue and Couch St.

Stark's Vacuums is one of that vanishing breed of quintessential Portland purveyors of commerce that is not only as Portland AF but also has survived through generations; 2022 will mark Stark's 90th year in business. If you wanted a really good Covid-era face mask, you've been there latterly. If you want a great vacuum, you will go there. And if you're not near this one, there are nine locations scattered across the Portland Metro area.

This particular one has been kind of the Home Office of the company. This, NE Grand and Couch, is the location that holds their renowned Vacuum Museum, which once occupied the windows looking out onto Couch you can see in the photo, but has been moved to another part of the building as the Couch side has been made into another leasable space.

Looking at what's been written about that Vacuum Museum, you get an idea that
vacuums aren't just something Stark's is good at selling. This outfit is scary serious about them. But, then again, Portland's always been good at being intense about things long before they're cool; Stark's was rocking vacuums back with 'Dyson sphere' was just something SF writers and astrophysicists talked about. They also have the best damn logo anybody ever came up with for a vacuum cleaner company, and I will fight you on this.

This picture sucks. But totally in the best possible way.

A-1 Truck Parts? Just Look For the Sign of the ...

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On our way back from Kelley Point late that day, we decided to course down North Columbia Boulevard. Most of Columbia Boulevard is industrial, and out near the Columbia/Burgard/Lombard Tee, you ad the remote feeling as well; even though you're merely a loud shout from Saint Johns, it hides behind a rise, so one, not having told it was there, wouldn't know that it was.

And it was in this section of Columbia Boulevard that we saw the niftiest thing we've seen in rather a while:

9609 N. Columbia Blvd, Portland. At Your Service.

Guess what they sell there. Guess. Goooooo ahead ...

Right. Girl Scout Cookies and Amway SA8 laundry soap. I knew  I couldn't fool you people.

Coolest thing is to look at it from the end. It's then you can tell, without mistaking, that they sliced the outer few inches from each side of a light truck and stuck them together which is pretty creative, the more one thinks about it. And an awful good show, too. 

[pdx] Classic Neon, 20th and East Burnside, Portland

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Last posting was a long look down East Burnside from NE 20th Avenue. Here's what I stopped to pict, though:

Super cool, and look really nifty late at night, QED, as they say.

The two buildings are on opposite corners of East Burnside Street and NE 20th Avenue. And they've been there for a long time, a very long time. Of the two, the one with more vintage is the Tip Top Cleaners' sign, which shows its age most proudly. The words are in two horizontal bars, with a bending arrow running through them, going from absolutely vertical to pointing at the front door, as those signs used to do. It has no animated effects, but I'll bet at one time that arrow was a running animated series.

Also, it's delightfully multicolored.

The other one, above and to the right, belongs to the Willoughby Hearing aid center concern on the NW corner. It's only one color, the bright red, late at night; the sign sprouts as a semi-futuristic and minimalist layerd trilon from the building's corner.

What it misses in vintageness it more than makes up for in MadMen-style coolness and simplcity. If the Tip Top's sign was the art-deco dude in shiny-lapelled tux and tails, the Willoughby sign is the Rat-Packer, cool in his slender-cut black suit and his skinny tie.

The visual loveliness isn't only limited to the neon on this corner. The window to Tip Top, here lensed by The Wife™, is very sensitive to not only its vintage, but it's sense of Portland place.

That fat type on the bottom and the art-deco flair framing the mountain? Awesome. 

[liff_in_OR] Newberg's Classic Dairy Queen Sign

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Newberg is the first town you get into after leaving the Portland Metroplex going south on Oregon State Hwy 99W. It's the vanguard of wine country, the sentinel admitting you to that charming area known as Yamhill County.

At the entrance to the center of town, the highway splits into a couplet made up of First Street and Hancock, and this continues for about ten or twelve city blocks. At the west end, the two streets snap back together, cross the railroad tracks, and head on southwest to the land of the eternal traffic jam, Dundee. And, if you didn't look quickly, you'll have missed it.

404 West First Street. It's a DQ that looks quite a bit like just about every other DQ you're likely to see; cream-colored walls, red mansard roof.  But there's something that might catch the eye a little more than other things, especially if you have an eye for the classics.

Some ten-fifteen years back, the DQ wasn't the commodious sit-in place it was, it was a traditional drive-up. Anyone familiar with the adorbs little DQ drive-up and sit-out at SE 56th and Division here in Portland will be able to picture this. It was quite a bit the same. Well, about ten or fifteen years back, the Newberg DQ decided to give its patrons the inside-dining experience. I was sad, a little. It's nice to sit inside with your burger, but the old-fashioned burger driveups have a charm that can't be denied or resisted.

But they kept the old sign. Standing fifteen or twenty feet up, on a stout pole that shows a bit of rust, the stylized ice-cream cone keeps happy watch on the western entry to Newberg, taking in the equipment rental place, a Dutch Bros, a trailer court across the way, and a 100% Hispanic tire-seller across the street.

Whether or not you'd ever live in Newberg, there's a definite American-small-townness that recalls the rosy memories of prim little farming towns. The past wasn't perfect, but certain facets were adorable.

In Newberg, some of it can be found under the sign of DQ. Roadside neon, the way it used to be … and still is.

[pdx] Is "Paths Of Glory" Right For You? Ask Your Doctor. Or Your Movie Marquee.

2919.Floating in the night over the corner of NE 28th Avenue and East Burnside Street, the marquee of the Laurelhurst Theater (where you can do Portlandy things like see a $4 movie and drink a microbrew) recalls a grander time:

But little did we know we can get coded medical advice there. Let's zoom in …

Now, I don't know what the drug 1957 Paths Of Glory is. But there are side effects to worry about, the most notable being Warm bodies on the road.

Maybe it's one of those sexy-stud drugs, with a Beatles theme.

Why don't we do it in the road? No one will be watching us …