A View Of Oaks Amusement Park

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We have our very own old-school amusement park here in Portland, on the river, in the southeast part of town; The Oaks. 

Oaks Amusement Park. 

This is the view from the Sellwood Boulevard bluff. That's real Portland history there, a modestly-sized amusement park that has existed for more than 100 years.

As you can see from this elevated view, it's not one of those spectacle parks. It doesn't have a huge, vomit-inducing roller coaster, no monsters of special effects. just a modest carnival midway and a lovely river-side location. 

There's also a world-famous roller-rink, which, along with the park itself, has survived ten decades of ups, downs, and hundred-year floods

The last time I saw it on TV was in an episode of Leverage which was set in the 1940s and featured a plot on the violent racism of the times. That show, I tell you, was a gem.

This is one of the most Portland things there is, and it's a little hard to find (though the tagline I remember hearing on KEX radio growing up, "at the east end of the Sellwood Bridge!" goes a long way toward helping anyone find it.

It's good for a midway stroll if you're not into rides, and there's all the good-bad midway food. 

The Rink at Oaks Park

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The bluff above Oaks Bottom afforded us this view, too.

There you see the building that contains the famous Oaks Park Roller Rink, still all-skatin' it for going on for nearly 118 years. It's survived eras, ruinous floods, and periods of less-than-optimal maintenance. It's appeared on TV shows and in childhoods of several generations.

It remains immaculate. 

Yoshida's Haven at the Other End Of Stark

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Oblique Coffee is at the 'lower' end of Stark Street. This is at the bitter end of the road.

From the river in the middle of Portland to the end that crosses Sandy in nearly sixteen miles. Stark has a great deal of history to it, and a lot of that history has to do with the automobile and city-to-city transport. An artifact of that is located on the south side of Stark, just before it crosses the Sandy River. 

Stark Street begun to evolve into its current form at about the time the automobile became popular. Back then, not long after the first years of the Twentieth Century passed by, roads existed but were poor; various car-ownership societies formed something of a national movement (the "Good Roads" movment) to promote the building of suitable facilities that would let them go out and enjoy thier newfangled 'cars' in the forests and wilderness. 

The utmost end of Stark Street is, then, the way it is because of an organization called the Portland Auto Club. They wanted a nice place to drive to and that urge eventually became an auto campgrounds and a destination picnic spot for car owners of the day.

Down the years it eventually came into the hands of Junki Yoshida of Yoshida's Sauces fame, and I understand he lived there for a while. More latterly the property has been donated to the Mt. Hood Community College Foundation. It's an event venue now: weddings and things of that nature. Across from that is a fine-dining spot, Junki's Riverview Restaurant. 

The view is still free. 

Holgate Slough, Corbett and California

3680

Most of the photos I've been exploiting over the last few instalments have been from the picture-taking expedition to the wilds of South Portland. The ideal viewpoint we located was the intersection of SW Corbett Avenue and California Street ... that's where the big downhill grade begins.

It offers gifts in more than one direction, though, it must be said. As witness:

What you can see from there is the Willamette, where it widens out to encompass Ross Island and Hardtack Island, two large gravel bars that would eventually be tied together at the south end to provide a lagoon for Ross Island Sand & Gravel to quarry for all those years. That charming floating home community is lined along the side that becomes what is called Holgate Slough. Of particular note is the blue building perched on the bluff overlooking the river, in the upper right of the frame. The mural on it is famous and the target of many a fellow amateur photog and blogger, and it's on the back side of Wilhelm's Portland Memorial Funeral home. It's reputedly the largest mural in the United States of America.

We journeyed to this corner of town to find street blades with the new South directional; we found none (though those odd brown blades in the South Waterfront continue to annoy in more ways than one). We expected something since the City o'Portland is apparently locked and loaded to run out and slap a decal on all suitable blades and then replace those that need replacing, but nothing. Nada one. So despite the City insisting this be a problem and fixing it nonetheless, we can still go out there and pretend to the preferable reality that it didn't happen. However, looking at the weathered blades at the corner, it's still a known thing that they went from merely worn to instant antiques. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Backstory Books & Yarn: A True Bookstore Experience Online During Stay-At-Home Time

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Portland is a city of bookstores.

We've spoken of one of the most charming of the smaller indies in town: Backstory Books and Yarn. We knew her when she was over by 60th and Foster and then when she moved over to Hawthorne (a place, it must be said, she's always belonged).

From the Backstory website

Small, witty, diligently curated, delightful. And then Covid-19 and the advent of stay-at-home and businesses closing because they had to. Now, as a bookstore, such a business has an advantage in as much as you can take orders over the phone or arrange an online alternative. Books aren't perishable and ship very well. But you lose the delicious bookstore browsing experience ... or do you?

Well, I guess it's not a perfect replacement, but what Backstory has done comes close. The proprietrix had taken pictures of the very shelves where the books are arranged and have posted them to Backstory's website. You can tour the shelves at your leisure in picture form and contact Backstory and buy them thusly. She's got every thing up, which is an advantage for a business of this size selling books (when things finally open up, if you ever wanted to browse a cosy bookstore in the old-school way, this place will leave you in bliss). Powell's couldn't do this. Barnes & Noble couldn't do this (does B&N still exist? Does anything anywhere exist anymore?).

This is why we need the small local indie. How much poorer would we be.

We bow, humbled to Backstory's MacGyvering in the shadow of novel coronavirus. We'll be stopping there tomorrow to get a book the Brown Eyed Girl has wanted for a very long time.

Backstory's home page is https://www.backstorybooksandyarn.com/. If you just want to get down to business, start browsing at https://www.backstorybooksandyarn.com/browse. The rest of it should be pretty easy to figure out; there are instructions on each page, and if you haven't figured out how to use that sort of stuff by now you should probably not be allowed in public unescorted (well, after stay-at-home gets lifted, that is).

[pdx_liff] Sittin' In With T.A. Barnhart and Ted Wheeler

3363.

Yesterday I had the exceptionally fine privilege of being in the same room with some pretty smart guys.

T.A., in the driver's seat.

To be most precise, I got a ringside seat to watching a good and smart friend and fellow local blogger, T.A. Barnhart, conduct a video interview with Portland mayor-elect Ted Wheeler for an upcoming project he's busy right now crafting. As experiences go, it was pretty peak. I got my first real up-close look at some video production with inspiring, driven people, and it was a real bracing education. I'm still busy processing the experience.

Ted Wheeler, as is no secret, is Portland's mayor-elect. He avoided runoff when he took more than 50 per cent of the vote in May, and I was an enthusiastic voter for him. I'm pleased and proud to say I had that chance. His campaign singularly impressed me that he was ready and eager to tackle the problems that the Rose City is experiencing right now.

What impressed me the most, and inspired me the most, was a really daring step, as campaigns go. He took his 'office' to the people, setting up a desk and talking and listening and hearing. Political animal that I am, I watched a lot of campaigns and a lot of styles. I've also followed Ted's story since he became Multnomah County Chair and then left, to my own chagrin (but the State of Oregon's benefit) to become State Treasurer. There was a kind of honesty and sincerity to it I've not seen before, and I fancy myself as cynical as they come.

Office hours are open ! Come on down to SE 79th and SE Stark and bring your ideas for #pdx #TedsDesk pic.twitter.com/fbwofy1bFN

— Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) March 25, 2016

The trip is as honest as it comes. I live in outer east Portland, Out 122nd Way, in the David Douglas community. This is an area which seems a beneficiary of a sort of benign neglect from the City of Portland. And I don't know how much change is in store. I think, with Ted, we're going to get a higher order of mayor than we've had: smart, engaged, open, and accessable.

More simply put, the Ted you saw on the campaign, based on my impression, is the Ted we're going to get. And that's going to be a good thing.

In the meantime, look forward to what T.A.'s putting together for us all. I know it's going to be good, but then, I saw the raw material. 

[pdx] Burgerville Souvenir Pencils

3188.

In doing a bit of micro-tidying I came upon this, which we still have.

Burgerville USA's 50th anniversary was two-three years back. At the time much swag was to be had. We grabbed a handful of these:

There are still fourteen of them. With all the pencils and pens that have collected here as Chez Klein, there's no need to use them just now. Though I will, eventually. But that day's a while off, I wot.

[PDX] The Studios Of Portland: Retro-cool KGW-TV

3144.

I have said it before, and I'll say it again; TV stations are temples to me.

I'm sure it comes from too much Saturday morning TV and game shows and too much TV news when growing up. Once I saw pictures of Portland over the TV … well, it was game over for my sentimental heart.

Now that I've been a Portlander for more than half my life, it's surprising to realize that some things never get old to me. Like driving past TV stations … the technology, the energy. TV stations to me are like those purple lights to bugs. Irresistible.

I'm fortunate that I've gotten to tour some. Not all the ones I've wanted, of course; the day of the regular station tour … if ever there was one … is loooong past. But so far, KATU, Channel 2, KOPB, and KGW's Studio on the Square. KOIN, despite my love of its building, I've still not seen into, and the KGW main studio, still nada there too also. Hope springs eternal, at least within the limited bounds of a human's life.

But, as I said, I've never gotten tired of pulling past TV studios. And, if KOIN's is a mothership, then KGW's is Moonbase Alpha … kind of what you get if you let all the architecture in Gerry Anderson's TV shows collide and merge, but in the good way, totally in the good way.

You reach the KGW studios by travelling west on SW Jefferson Street going out of the city core. The two streets, SW Jefferson and SW Columbia, form an important legacy 1-way couplet; these two streets carried US Highway 26 before the Sunset Highway was built and connected to the inner I-5/I-405 freeway gauntlet. The streets still merge at SW 18th Avenue and proceed under the Vista Bridge to merge with the Sunset just west of the Vista Ridge Tunnel.

But I digress and get away with myself, and pass by the building just like you might, because it cleverly slots into its surrounds. The facade almost seems too small to contain a TV station. But it's there, on the north side of SW Jefferson Street, between SW 14th and 17th Avenues, just as you start to go downhill into the bowl of Goose Hollow.

The first thing you notice is the cowlings over the windows. When KGW's studios were built, they were obviously designing for a then-futuristic look. Well, it's gone through a futuristic phase through various fashion changes without altering, and now, it's come back around … delightfully retro-futuristic, riding the Ouroborous of architectural fashion.

This is one cool-ass building.

That mast at one time held a lit sign bearing the station's call-letters. The place you'll find station ID from street level is on a modest sign in front:

The new Gannett empire style has not yet trickled down to the sign in front, but I'm sure it's set to soon. It holds all the just-superceded logos, including the old KGW.com and a digital subchannel I must say we quite miss … KGW 24/7, kind of a super-local weather channel, cycling beautiful Oregon views from KGW's many remote cams with the occasional weather report and news-show recast. This was a good, great thing, and we miss it. Seriously.

The front of the studio has a classy touch no other broadcast center in Portland has … this wonderful semi-circular drive designed to drop anyone, in any limo (or personal car, even) in style, at the front door to the station. It really is quite hip, and moreso in person.

Did I want to walk up and look in that lobby? You bet! Did I? No! I respect boundaries. But I'm hoping that someday KGW gives a studio tour. I would so be there.

Now, I mentioned that it seemed a brief facade for a TV studio. It's what I've heard call a 'sleeper' … a little front leads to a big back side. In this case, the building is shaped like a reversed "L", with the tip of the base of the L peeking out onto Jefferson. The building extends back and then turns west. The back door is about a block north of Jefferson on SW 17th Avenue:

… which you can tell, because there's the window cowls up there.

Each edifice has things to recommend it. KGW's is just totally cool, because it has this funky futuristic design that became retro-future, and it wears it with cool self-confidence.

KGW doesn't need your approval. KGW just is. 

[pdx_legends] Working Kirk Reeves - Portland's Patron Saint, Now In Mural Form

3133.

He's part of Portland's landscape now … on a permanent, full-time basis.

When Kirk Reeves passed from us, since two years ago as of November, more than one intersecting PDX artistic community gasped in shock, dismay and despair. I'm sure there are those around us trying to still come to terms with it. I, for one, can't hit the west end of the Hawthorne Bridge going east, either straight on from SW Madison Street or coming up the ramp from northbound Naito Parkway, without looking at that little pavement peninsula he sat on with his horn and his paraphernalia, busking in those absurd-but-oh-so-right white tails, sequined waistcoat, and Mickey Mouse ears, wishing that he could somehow come back and do an encore for a while.

Well, Kirk is back … in a way.

Of course, those of us who knew and loved having Kirk around were hoping for a tribute of some sort. You don't lose that sort of happiness without feeling generally betrayed by the world in general, but having a homage to someone who kept others' spirits so high helps us do what healing we have to do to move on.

We loved Kirk enough that we lobbied to have the Tilikum Crossing named for him; the learned heads on the commission decided on another name despite Working Kirk being the popular choice, because learned heads reasons.

But someone did finally come up with something, and it's smashing, and I fancy that Kirk might have approved. At 430 NE Lloyd Blvd – the corner of Lloyd and NE Grand Avenue … there is a small, plain building that was, for years, home to a business called Rich's Delicatessen. Like almost everything that thrived in the 80s, it's gone now, and the building has been remodeled and refreshed, at least on the outside (the inside remains unfinished, a large expanse of gravel taking up most of the middle of the floor. Oddest thing …).

Thanks to the preternaturally sensitive artist, Gwenn Seemel, there is now a firey-passionate mural on that wall …

The style of the painting, seeming to layer small abstract shapes over colors and making up forms from these shapes, conveys a lot of emotion. It depicts, as closely as possible, the quiet riot that was the passion of Kirk.

The permanent beatific smile, the immense personal warmth one felt when talking with the man … it's all there. The message is there too, and rendered in playful, hand-created type.

It's a thing of despair to see that Kirk now kind of iconically stands out in the city he spent his artistic passion in, but it's a hopeful thing too … the combination of the style, the likeliness gazing warmly out at everyone who may pass that way and the message above, kind of makes me think he's really gazing out there. Makes me think I can go by and say 'hi' and he will, somehow, hear me and listen and somehow respond.

He's a part of the fabric of the city now, a patron saint of all of us aspiring artists who are striving to overcome our own obstacles, made real by an artist with a very deft touch.

… watching over a city where food carts roam the streets between gigs …

… and where streetcar tracks bask in the warmth of a somewhat-too-warm late August Portland gloaming.

Being part of the Orycon family, I'd call him a friend; he had closer friends than I did. But I feel privileged that I knew him at all.

He was one of those people who are like that. The world was simply better that he was around at all; it's a bit lacklustre becase he's not here now, but you know you were lucky just to share the same planet with him, if only for a little while. 

[PDX] Love Sellwood? Then There's a Bridge I'd Like To Sell You.

3126.

Seriously …

After nearly 90 years of public service, the Sellwood Bridge could have a new owner and a new home. The bridge has been designated a historic resource which requires it to be made available for historic reuse before it is removed to make way for the new Sellwood Bridge. Multnomah County is accepting proposals to buy the bridge until September 12, 2014.

This chapter of the Sellwood Bridge follies isn't facetious, though, it be for real. The old bridge has to go, and since it's (as the excerpt says) a 'historic resource', they have to put the ol' girl up for grabs. You want it, you can maybe get it.

It is a continuous steel truss, over 1,000 feet in length, and you have to take it away. So, it's like a spiffy piece of furniture in someone's front yard, with a sign saying 'best offer', and you have to move it.

Only muuuuuuuuch bigger.

So get your proposals together and get your financing in line by the 24th of next month.

One very historic bridge … such a deal!

Full details at http://www.sellwoodbridge.org/?e=554

Good luck. 

[pdx] I Bring You The Head Of Tom Peterson. Or, At Least, The Face.

3099.

Tom Peterson seems to be a trending item.

Interest has increased in the legendary salesman since it's been made public that his health is failing to the point he has to be moved into assisted living, as reported by KPTV's Andrew Padula last month. Considering Tom's commercial relationship with Yesterday's KPTV, that's only appropriate.

The signage remains memorable and, in its Portlandian way, iconic. When his visage delivered its smiling benediction to the corner of 82nd and Foster Rd, you knew just where you were, and it was a landmark. The building has been remodeled out of recognition, of course; gutted, made new inside and out, and turned into a corner strip center, "Peterson Plaza". I've been an Oregonian all my life and a Portlander the majority of it, and I know my granfalloon enough to know that we save things.

If we didn't exercise some restraint, this whole state could appear on Hoarders. That's how we get so funky and kitschy. We're drunk on it, up in here.

A couple of days ago, though, an acquaintance of longstanding who prefers anonymity at this time contacted me and said he knew where the old sign was. Really? said I. I'd be all over that if I could.

Get back to you in a couple of days, was the gist of the reply. Today, here's the payoff. Somewhere, secluded in a Portland back yard, I know not where (not even in confidence, and I understand why), rests …

The head … or at least the face … of Tom Peterson.

This is the most Portland back yard in Portland, wherever it is. And I'm not tellin' where it is because I don't know; and what little I know of whom took it I shall not divulge. He knows how some people are, and so do I.

But it's enough to know, just to know, that it's out there somewhere.

Now, that's Tom Peterson's.

[pdx] My Tom Peterson's 82nd And Foster Pic Communicates Hard!

3093.

Being the PDX lover that I am, I usually find my way to the great posts, one way or the other. Maybe it's net-magic, the way the intarwebz tend to remember what you like, I don't know. But I find them, or they find me.

Today's offering is a article at the real estate blog Movoto, which I have only just heard about. The reason is this fine article about sweet quirky Portland things that were. Pride of place, though, and number one of the 26 Things You'll Never See In Portland Again, is this:

Which uses this photo I have up at Flickr:

… which was taken back in 2005 and originally posted on this blog at http://zehnkatzen.blogspot.com/2005/12/logodesign-pdxhistory-now-thats-tom.html

I rock this town. With my blog. And if they think of this photo when they think of Tom Peterson's that was, well, that's about the next best thing to getting a ton of money for my opinions.

Which I'm still open to. Just sayin'.

[pdx] The Age of Drexler: When Portland Was Glidetown

3089.What. A. Season.

I wish it hadn't ended in a rout-ish ending, but what. A. Season.

Am I right?

It would seem the Blazers are entering, at long last, something of a Golden Age. Depends on how much you know. If you started following them lately, or are under thirty, it may seem like the first time they were big, big, big.

Well, there were three Golden Ages of Portland Trail Blazers. The first, of course, started with the 1977 Championship, during the days of Dr. Jack. After Walton and crew won the prize, for a few years, while some of the magic remained and Walton stayed ahead of injuries, and then after the Mountain Man left, it seemed possible they could return.

Portland's always wanted a dynasty. Not yet.

This, the Third Golden Age, is dawning under the multiple suns of Aldridge, Lillard, Lopez, et. al., great players, a tight unit, great and winning personalities. It's aborning, but I won't speak much more of it. I don't want to make the soufflé fall, as it were. We're paying attention, suffice as to say.

The Second Golden Age seemed to have it all. A tight unit, winning personalities, and a glittering style. All led by Clyde Drexler. And if one isn't familiar with Clyde the Glide, allow me to introduce you:

The Glide may now reside in Houston, his hometown, but during the day, he was the floor general the Blazers needed. Charismatic but still laid-back and smooth in personal style, he made the team watchable and was, to this fan, the glue that made the Blazers into the most playoff-worthy version since the First Age.

Number 22 still holds court in Portland, though. On Southeast 9th Avenue, between Hawthorne Boulevard and Clay Street, on the south side of the building that includes CleverCycles and the Helium Comedy Club, amid black and white bolts of the lightning he commanded at whim, Clyde prepares to slam the dunk.

The bolts are appropriate to his style, which crackled with raw energy.

Timing, though, they say, is everything. During the days that Portland was Glidetown, Portland had two more chances to get to the top of the hill: 1990 and 1992. In '90, they fell to the Pistons, and in '92, Jordan and the Bulls. You couldn't feel that bad about they losing, though; they played with heart and soul and chemistry and it was fun to watch them compete hard even though they lost in the end.

It was more fun to see them win, however.

It was, in a gestalt way, satisfying in more than one way in that last game of Round 1, where Lillard nailed that three-pointer. Clyde is now announcing for the Rockets, and just before that clock started, with the Blazers two points down and nine-tenths of a second to play, and it came from the voice of Clyde Drexler:

"Definitely watch Lillard for three."

And he called it. Wizard, I tell you. 

[pdx] KOPB Open House, Complete With Celebrity Sightings!!!

3080.

I am a kid of the TV generation. This is true, and relevant.

I was born in Silverton, Oregon and spent a lot of time watching the boob tube. It would not be wholly incorrect to say that the TV signals not only sent me news, information, fun, and a ton of daytime game shows, but also kind of pulled me north from my ancestral home. TV has always had a sort of magic … strange action at a distance, that made a kid on the country-fied margin of a mid-Willamette Valley town feel like he was just another Portlander.

Newscasters were amongst my first idols. Ivan Smith, Rick Meyers, Ted Bryant, Jim Bosley, Mike Donahue … if you grew up in Oregon during the 70s, you knew these names too.

Our granfallon, but not a bad thing.

So, now that I've been a resident of Portland for more than fifty percent of my life now, it seems a bit strange that the idea of a visit to a TV station would still excite me. As Oregonians go, I'm pretty jaded about some things. But when The Wife™ told me that we could hit KOPB TV during an open house, there was no question about whether or not I was going to be there.

So, we hit Clackamas Town Center for watch batteries; I must not enter a TV station in Portland, it ought be written, without my Tom Peterson Watch strapped on. A totem, if you will. The building and equipment will at once note this, and accept me as one of their own. Or, at least, an elucidating conversation shall ensue.

KOPB's main studio, where all the TV magic pertains, is a building along SW Macadam Avenue in the southern reaches of Portland's Johns Landing area, that flat area between the river and the hills south of the South Waterfront Condo Newtown, where the addresses on the cross-streets begin with the number 0. KOPB's building is located in the space-post continuum at 7140 SW Macadam Avenue; the entry is on the west side of the street and is at the cross of SW Nevada Street. Let there be no mistake, though, despite there being a parking lot at the studio building, there was to be no chance of getting a space there; Oregon Public Broadcasting is that popular. We parked about two blocks north on a side street, which gave for a nice little walk, which is no mean thing, as the Johns Landing nabe is almost too cute for adequate description.

Balloons, pop up tents, free swag just for showing up … we got two great Oregon Field Guide DVDs and an Oregon Experience about the nation's first female cop, who happened here in Portland, and met two very famous celebrities. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We are about to enter the TV zone, and signs and wonders are to start portending all over the place. Please, step inside the doors …

Just inside the doors and behind the wonderful architecture of the reception desk is a lobby with history. Wonderful stuff. Before digital TV and remote-control cameras, this is the way they did it back in the day …

KOAC was one of the two original stations in the OPB network. That was the one in Corvallis: KOAP was the Portland half. And, before there was .MP4 files and digital audio, this is how you rocked it on remote:

During the 80s, the OPB Network expanded with the addition of KVDO, Salem's former independent Channel 3, which was eventually moved to Bend, and the 13 was the LaGrande channel, nailing down NE Oregon and providing OPB with, if not world domination, overwhelming command of the state of Oregon.

OPB world domination is scheduled sometime in the future perhaps. I can think of worse things.

The classic symbol of broadcasting seems to be the microphone, and here are some classics from OPB's history, complete with call-signs:

Sadly, not too much paper ephemera, though I found this matchbook cover cosmically hilarious …

Wise eyes may have watched Channel 10. Wise mouths have moved on from the cigarette. Of course, wise mouths will always be with us, won't they?

Moving along past an even older version of portable camera than before …

… there come the radio studios. On the right as you proceed down the hall, there's the KOPB radio studio, on the air with the Saturday edition of Think Out Loud. 

The crown jewel of the building, the TV production studio, is at the south end of the building. The entry level turns out to be upstairs, and at the end of the corridor is a overlook to the studio floor. Oregon Art Beat was taping a performance of the U of O's women's a capella group, Divisi. 

The studio level was downstairs. A classic view beside the door:

Despite the notes of classic broadcasting history one can see everywhere, make no mistake, OPB is thoroughly, almost disconcertingly modern.  Stepping into the master control center was a little like stepping into the bridge of the J.J. Abrams version of the bridge of the USS Enterprise. 
 

Guided through by a technician who knew just everything about everything, he told us all the steps required to get shows out of the aether and on the are. It's computers, of course, all the way down; the only physical tape storage was the archives, which seem to be a large cabinet resembling a vending machine and about the size of two very large refrigerators. They contain tapes holding about 1 TB each; requests make their way to the system, which extracts the files from tape and places them on the server for later broadcast. It's a world of digital transmission and computer files there, and it's very quiet and efficient with beautiful lights and test patterns.

Not for the first time, I realized that I had missed one of those various callings I just wasn't clever enough to get into. Video transmission kind of does it to me. being in this room, knowing that the programs seen on the small monitors are instantly going to every corner of the state that has a computer or a TV, there's an amazing feeling of having one's finger on the pulse of modern times. The tech guide opined that it was never too late to start, but I wonder. The idea of that ship having sailed is a hard one to divorce from.

At this time, the information being dished out to Oregonians was dispensed through the minor gods of Christopher Kimball and Lidia Bastianich. Suitably, for Portland, it was cooking shows.

I always thought it was strange. All those shows about cooking, not one about washing up. Anyway.

All is not digital there, not yet … as long as there is analog legacy media, they'll need to convert, and that's one of the jobs this lumbering artoo unit does :

There were still video tape decks and legacy technology, but it was chiefly devoted to the conversion of analog technology to digital as needed. It's not dead, but it is fading away.

Back upstairs and toward the exit to the building, across the corridor from the KOPB radio studio was the one for the local legendary listener-supported jazz station, KMHD-FM.

KMHD is a uniquely local thing. Housed at the campus of Mount Hood Community College until about 2008, it's been broadcasting jazz, commercial-free, to Portlandia and surrounds for between thirty and forty years. It's never been a part of the Mount Hood CC curriculum, but MHCC does own the station; from 2009 OPB has been running it in partnership with MHCC, which is the license holder and station owner.

So for those of you who love listening to KMHD, there's the magic happening, right in front of you.

So much broadcasting in such a small space, so close to each other. This never ceases to amaze me. Broadcasting is magic, kinda.

Back out to the sun/rain/sun, we stopped again to chat with our celebrities. I present to you Steve Amen and Eric Cain, and if you don't know these names, you should. If there was an Oregon citizenship test, they'd be on it.

Steve Amen (l), Eric Cain (r). Local broadcast gods.

Steve Amen, of course, is the affable face of the legendary Oregon Field Guide. Eric Cain produced the equally-legendary Oregon Exprerience series. If it's Oregon, the history,  the culture, the important faces in Oregon history, the geography, travel, those two programs very nearly have it covered. They're passionate about Oregon, this special place and we have nothing but admiration for their creative energies, every one of which counts large.

They are also incredibly friendly guys who it's terribly easy to fall into a deep chat about the subjects they cover. I recently saw the Oregon Experience about Ken Kesey, an author whose works I've never read but a man whose life is utterly fascinating, and was immensely pleased to hear Eric talk about it.

If you never heard of the awesomeness these guys produce (not to mention the third member of the triumvirate, Oregon Art Beat) then it's time to bone up, cowboys. A lot of past OFGs are available for viewing any time at http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/; similarly for Oregon Experience the site is http://www.opb.org/television/programs/oregonexperience/. For history both natural and human nothing else can compare, in the video stream, and for those who wish to properly know how to Oregon, which is a lifelong study even for us natives, it's continuing education.

It's free to all, whether or not you can contribute. At least we should be grateful to have it. 

We have history. But broadcasting? No mystery.

[pdx] Tom Peterson and Parkinson's Disease

3070.

I've documented hereunto my affection for growing up in the age of Tom Peterson. The man was Portland's quintessential salesman, always smiling, always selling. Growing up, watching Portland Wrestling, with Tom good-naturedly hawking Xonix TVs in the crow's nest at the Portland Sports Arena next to Frank Bonnema … you can't really say you're an Oregonian kid unless you have some resonance with that.

Tom's store, after ups, downs, Stereo Super Stores, bankruptcy, resurgam, addition of Gloria to the famous logo, and final closing, was the keynote and heartbeat for Portland advertising for so very many years. Whether or not you would ever shop there, you'd take him to your heart. That smiling face just couldn't ever be mean to anyone.

If you hit him up on the right days, you could get a free haircut, too. Any style you wanted, as long as it looked like Tom's.

Tom's visage beatifying SE 82nd And Foster Road, back in the day.
©2009, Samuel John Klein, all rights reserved

He was out there and loved what he did. Some Taoist lesson in there somewhere, I'm sure.

The Tao of Tom.

As broken on KPTV-12 (the station where you'd most likely see him), he's advancing into the thick of his battle with Parkinson's disease, the one thing … short of absolute annihilation … that would have stopped him from selling. In honor of this bright spot of just plain decent human from back in the day, then …

You can see the video at KPTV's web page via this link. Have a hanky or two ready … seriously, it's kind of hard to watch, especially if you remembered his smiling face from all those commercials, and especially if you went down to 82nd and Foster and bought something from him. Xonix TVs are forever, you know … a haircut, well, it'll grow back.

I'm feeling a most existential sadness here. When Tom finally leaves us, as he must, a bright little part of silly, innocent Portland will kind of go with him.

And I'll miss it. Because I was there for that. It'll be losing a friend I never had the chance to meet.

Facebook has a group for people who remember the awesome, if you're interested: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tom-Petersons/243695409036413. I'm recommending this, of course.

The Portland Mercury has a bit at http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2014/04/25/tom-peterson-has-parkinsons-glorias-doing-great as well.

[pdx] Photos on Sunday: Tilikum and Terrior, Via Ursula K. LeGuin.

3066.

If there are discussions about what is the quintessential Portland novel, and, more over, a novel is sine qua non as far as a "Portland literature" is, it would be Ursula K. LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven.

A bit of an introduction if one has not been. The Lathe of Heaven is set in a fictionalized Portland and Oregon of the year 2002 (it now qualifies as an alternative history). It concerns George Orr, a man whose dreams can literally alter reality, and Dr. William Haber, a sleep and dream researcher … an onierologist … who discovers the quality of this power and tries to use it to recreate the world in a better version … sans war, sans hunger. Each dream is incarnated in unpredictable ways, causing eventual chaos, a kaleidoscope world and, unwittingly, revealing Dr. Haber as a megalomaniac, if a tender, loving one.

The novel got its hooks into me (and has permanently done so … laying next to this computer at this time is a paperback copy I got at Powell's on Sunday evening for $2.95, making this possibly the most Portland thing I could physically accomplish) with its fictionalized vision of Portland of the year 2002. Writing in the late 60s and early 70s as she did, I presumably assume that at least a part of her found it somewhat inevitable that Portland might expand, toxically, and ruin its own character.

The Portland at the beginning of Lathe massed 3,000,000 … as many people as are in the whole of Oregon today, less about 800,000 … and the New Cities of the then not-so-dry Oregon Outback had populations of approaching 7 million each. 

The Portland portrayed in the novel had a few geographical inconsistencies, but none worth noticing overmuch. Something about the narrative … the easy way she wrote of local geography, the familiar timbre to the words … made it plain to me that she knew this area intimately. She had a sense-of-place. The writing had a particular terrior… it simply couldn't have been written by anyone else, or anywhere else.

It was Oregon, fictionalized by an Oregonian, who loved Oregon. It felt good to read, and still does, to this day. I read Lathe to wallow in the descriptions of Portland, the free and casual way words like Willamette, Linnton, Zigzag and Rhodoendron are used. And if a few details are off … mentioning a place as 209 SW Burnside St … then the tender loving care with the place that is otherwise taken more than makes up for that.

Of course, the story is about a man whose dreams change the nature of reality. There's probably a little editing going on there as well.

Wandering up and down the Eastbank Esplanade, near OMSI, to get a good look at the Tilikum Crossing, the Bridge of the People. Not for the first time, looking along the river where, at many angles, you can at once take in automobile bridges and an aerial tram but also, now a bridge for trains, bikes and people only, did a feeling grasp me … and then I had it.

Passages from The Lathe of Heaven, meditations on getting around in the overpopulated, overpolluted, overmoist Portland of the fictional year 2002 invaded my consciousness and did not let go. I had to get a copy of the book to read again, you see. I had no choice.

We join George Orr as he travels from Vancouver to Portland on a subway (can you imagine?):

To go under a river: there's a strange thing to do, a really weird idea.

To cross a river, ford it, wade it, swim it, use boat, ferry, bridge, airplane, to go upriver, to go downriver in the ceaseless renewal and beginning of current: all that makes sense. But in going under a river, something is involved which is, in the central meaning of the word, perverse. There are roads in the mind and outside it the mere elaborateness of which shows plainly that, to have got into this, a wrong turning must have been taken way back.

 There were nine train and truck tunnels under the Willamette, sixteen bridges across it, and concrete banks along it for twenty-seven miles. Flood control on both it and its great confluent the Columbia, a few miles downstream from central Portland, was so highly developed that neither river could rise more than five inches even after the most prolonged torrential rains. 

 The Willamette was a useful element of the environment, like a very large, docile draft animal harnessed with straps, chains, shafts, saddles, bits, girths, hobbles. If it hadn't been useful, of course, it would have been concreted over, like the hundreds of little creeks and streams that ran in darkness down from the hills of the city under the streets and buildings.

 But without it, Portland wouldn't have been a port; the ships, the long strings of barges, the big rafts of lumber still came up and down it. So the trucks and the trains and the few private cars had to go over the river or under it. 

 Above the heads of those now riding the GPRT train in the Broadway Tunnel were tons of rock and gravel, tons of water running, the piles of wharves and the keels of ocean-going ships, the huge concrete supports of elevated freeway bridges and approaches, a convoy of steamer trunks laden with frozen battery-produced chickens, one jet plane at 34,000 feet, the stars at 4.3+ light years.

Later, very near the end of the book, Orr travels across a Portland that was, in some ways, a crazy quilt of all the possible Portlands that he had, at one time, dreamed:

Orr returned to downtown Portland by boat. Transportation was still rather confused; pieces, remnants, and commencements of about six different public transportation systems cluttered up the city. Reed College had a subway station, but no subway; the funicular to Washington Park ended at the entrance to a tunnel which went halfway under the Willamette and then stopped. Meanwhile, enterprising fellow had refitted a couple of boasts that used to run tours up and down the Willamette and Columbia, and was using them as ferries on regular runs between Linnton, Vancouver, Portland, and Oregon City. It made a pleasant trip.

Weaving UKL's words (with due apologies) amongst the pictures creates a trip of its own. SF doesn't predict, it guesses and wonders; we should not be surprised that TriMet didn't take on LeGuin as a long-range planning consultant (though I figure it would be better off if it had). Still, contrasting the dystopian future of Portland in prose with the significantly cheerier (if still flawed) present, it's hard not to see the resonance. They regard each other as brothers by different mothers. They, oddly, mesh … the one being the flip side of the other.

In an ineffable way, the terrior that made Lathe possible wells up, unseen. The book beatifies and explores its setting without wallowing in it, by dwelling on what is, and the voice you hear whispering the details is the real-world surroundings … at least, those in the year it was written.

The quintessential Portland novel. There can be none other.