Resurrection

Some time ago I talked about the curious and somewhat dreary phenomenon of "abandoned" or orphan blogs; once gay and riotously convivial places whose owners, tenants, or lovers appeared to one day simply have walked away, leaving the lights on but nothing else.

From time to time I've come across these mysterious blogs and wondered; what happened? Lost job? Broken marriage? Simply lost interest? What? I never know; the blogs are simply artifacts without clues, riddles wrapped in enigmas, drifting endlessly in the Outer Rim of cyberspace.

The one blog in particular I discussed was one called, simply, D.D. Tinzeroes that had caught my eye because it spent some time on Portland history, a subject dearly treasured and laved with much adoration here in the Fire Direction Center.

Well!

It turns out that D.D. Tinzeroes was not dead! It was merely resting; pining for the fjords, the Norwegian Blue! Taking a bit of a nap, having the night off, merely biding its time!

Turns out that the blogger has, indeed, been busy, posting delightful bits of Northwest historiana, including more trolleys, trains, and streetcars as well as the top-rated urinals of the region and, lately, some priceless bits of the past pried from the World's Worst Newspaper, complete with commentary.

Here's my personal favorite, with the blogger's comments included:

"Arthur Davis, a negro who has frequently been sent to jail for roaming the streets after midnight, was tried and convicted in the police court yesterday on a charge of vagrancy. Davis, for months past, has been a hanger-on about some of the lowest dives at the lower end of town, among them a newly incorporated 5-cent all-round liquor establshment, and has made himself conspicuous by his general worthlessness. Davis pleaded that he one time washed a window, and on another occasion a floor. Judge Dement, in passing sentence, told David he had given him quite a number of opportunities to reform, and this time would allow him twenty-five days to debate and think over the subject. It cost Minnie Reynolds 10$ for acting in a disorderly manner and disturbing the neighbors on the vicinity of her residence Monday night. Officer Beach arrested her. She put up $10 bail, amd failing to appear for trial it was ordered into the city treasury."

-May 19 1886

["You are conspicuous by your general worthlessness."
"No! I washed a window, once."
"To see whether the saloon was open yet!"
"And a floor!"
"You were very drunk, and crawling in circles crying."]

Terrific stuff. So I'm pleased to report that D.D. Tinzeroes is NOT dead, but is, in fact, not just alive but very well.Pay a visit, leave a comment...let the blogger know you like his stuff, if indeed you do. That's all the pay we bloggers need.

And just so I can say that I did some bloggage...the appalling picture above is the "Coon Chicken Inn" that once occupied the site of "Clyde's Prime Rib" on NE Sandy.This fowl franchise - it was one of several outlets featuring the same racist trademark - opened here in 1931, lasted until the Fifties, and the original building appears to be in use today; the giant darkie-head has been decapitated and some sort of faux-medieval facade built over the other wing but the outline of the roof on the street side (the left as you look at the pictures) looks pretty much identical.I doubt whether the Inn would have welcomed any of Mr. Davis' descendents, seeing as it wasn't considered one of "the lowest dives at the lower end of town". We forget, now that we're "Little Beirut" the hipster capital of the Northwest how bloody ignorant and brutally racist we were just a generation or two ago.

The only black face the good citizens of white Portland wanted to see was on the front of the building winking.

So - a bit of Portland's scurrilous history for you, and while we're at it another shoutout to D.D. and his blog; long may their pixels phosphor!

Katter bort!

Went to the Timbers match Sunday, and took my bride.That in itself is something of an oddity. The Loved One enjoys a good soccer match as much as the next woman, but she also loves her peace and is a woman of calm good sense, none of which is there to be had in the North End at a Timbers contest.But she knows I love both the game and the surroundings, so when our friends Brent and Julie offered us their tickets she gamely stood by her man for ninety minutes to watch the final preseason friendly against the Swedish club AIK.

It was a fairly decent match, as footy goes; one-nil to the home side, which is always polite - a guest is never pushy - although these guests played a pretty rugged game of calcio. Our new Scots striker headed one in almost before the singing started (and was desperately unlucky not to get a second before the half) and the Boys in Red held on to the one-goal lead despite some shifty work at the back.But for my inamorata the real fun was all around her.

Our capo - the leader of the singing and chanting in the Timbers Army was this wonderful gal we called "Rosie" (because she looked sturdy and energetic enough to pull a double shift at Kaiser riveting together Liberty Ships) - is a long-term fixture in Section 108 and did her usual terrific job of conducting the singing; Mojo found her quite delightful.I liked this gal, who, in the excitement of the moment, actually slipped her feet out of her shoes and stood on them. Probably easier on the soles than the nubbly terrace pavement, but whatever the reason she made for a rather cute picture.As always, the Army poured out their hearts and their songs for the team; that's the Great Tradition of the game, and in case you enjoy a good singalong, here's a terrific place on the Web to learn a new song or two: "FanChants". They even have my favorite Newcastle song to the tune of Yellow Submarine, with the chorus that goes "Peter Reid had a fookin' monkey's head, a fookin' monkey's head, a fookin' monkey's head..."One thing you can always count on in Portland is creativity, and here's my vote for the so-far tifo of the year.I have no idea if AIK has a mouse mascot or not, but Jeld-Wen Field - from the days when it was plain old Civic Stadium - really DOES have a colony of feral cats, so, there. Great signage, whatever the real Swedish mouse situation.

The real thing starts next Monday, and should be a hellacious battle; our old enemies the Flounders of Seattle are looking scary good, and we'll have to be strong and fierce to bring the Cascadia Cup home to Stumptown this season.Cats away!

Lost In Translation

There are probably a million dumb-ass stories in the Naked City of Portland. This is just one of them.

I moved to Portland in the summer of 1990. When the van loaded with household goods, me, and my ex-wife rolled to a stop it was way out in darkest Beaverton in the western suburbs of Portland proper. We lived there for almost a decade, so I didn't get to know the city the way I do now.

But driving about the town in that first autumn I noticed two things; that there were a LOT of homeless people in Portland for a place that gets something like 200 days of rain a year. And probably because of that every freeway underpass had big white signs that read "No Trespassing" in English and Spanish.

Sort of.

Because here is one of those signs;Now I drove past these things for what must have been several years without really "seeing" them. They were just part of the scenery, like the scruffy winos, the pierced hipsters, and the coffee kiosks that are "Portland". So I never really thought about them. And neither, apparently, did anyone else including the people who made and set them up.

Until the World's Worst Newspaper printed a letter that read something like;

"I'm bilingual in English and Spanish and just moved here from (blank). So imagine my surprise when driving on I-405 the other day to spot a sign that advises me that "Traspasan" is prohibited. Now I have no idea what "Traspasan" is, but I know what it isn't, and that's a Spanish translation of the word "Trespassing". Just thought that you might want to let someone at the Department of Transportation know that."

So you can imagine the result. A whole bunch of people at the City and the Oregon DOT had to go on record as saying, basically "Ummm...errr...gubaduh!"

The "No Traspasan" signs began to disappear later that year, without publicity, and it's been probably five years since I've seen one. I thought that they were all gone. Until I biked downtown with my bride (whose replacement of the woman I was married to when I first saw one, the woman we like to call "pre-mommy", is one of the great miracles and blessings of my life - you know that, right, honey?) who knew my love for the ridiculous No Traspasan story and saved this little sign as a special treat for me.

And indeed it was.

And now I pass it on as a special treat to you.

Portland; the City That Works But Not On Its Spanish Language Skills.

Padrino

"Father's Day"C'mon, really?

For all that this silly day is some sort of ridiculous scam, I have to say we had a pretty nice weekend. Saturday was rainy, so we went to our beloved Rose City Gymnastics for the open gym. The littles love the heck out of this place and so do we; they jump, balance, flip, and tumble, and we help where we can and applaud when we should. It's a terrific way to spend a drizzly Saturday, and for ten bucks it's quality fun!From there we went to our Powell's Books (with a stop at L'Arcs D'Or for the Boy, who luuurves him some Mickey D's fries. I hate to admit it, but I like 'em myself in all their greasy, salty goodness. No joy on my Chilton's Guide, tho, so it was home for a quick stop and then out to meet our friends Meghan and Will at the Saraveza "Bottle Shop and Pasty Tavern", and, sure enough, they had a bloody incredible selection of beers in the bottle, and the beef pasty was hot, rich, and good.From there we parted company, me for home with the kiddos, Mojo to the Expo Center to watch some kick-ass Portland Roller Derby sport. Little man's well-loved after-school-care teacher was there, skating under her nom-du-derby of Kickassidy, and tho Mojo said she did, indeed, kick ass it wasn't enough for her team to handle the Break-neck Betties, this year's Rose City Rollers champs.I stayed in with the kiddos; Peep played his "World of Tanks" MMO game, while Missy and I watched "My Little Pony". Yes.

I admit it, all right?

OK?

I fucking like "My Little Pony".

For one thing, the little buggers are hilarious. Here's Rarity (the "fashion-girly" pony) finding her own way of dealing with her captors, the nefarious Diamond Dogs. Oh, and extra points for the gratuitous David Bowie reference, by the way:The people responsible for the new "My Little Pony" clearly have no intention of playing it straight. So nearly every episode we watched - and that girl loves her some ponies, so we watched a LOT - had some sort of little sting in its tail, whether it was the defeat of the Diamond Dogs through power whining, or the utterly unhinged antics of Pinkie Pie, who is some sort of holy fool of a pony, a Loki and a Coyote of all things four-footed and cute. She's at her best when she sings or when she gets excited - she rockets around like a hamster huffing nitrous oxide. She's a freaking riot.See what I mean?

Anyway, we had fun, and so did Mojo.

This morning I got a Father's Day present from the kiddos, and Mojo cooked a yummy breakfast, and then I went to do my own Father's Day good deed for our friend Christine and her oldest son. He's fifteen and starting to get bit by the automobile bug. So we took Stinky the Honda Civic down there, did the brakes (a fun, easy sort of wrenching to start with) and then went for a stick-shift lesson on his quiet street. Young man did well, and we all had fun; Mojo and Christine chatting, E and I wrenching, Peep and his pal the Poet playing Xbox, and Missy cavorting in the floor-jack box and doing art projects.

After another quick trip home I went downtown with my friends Brent and Julie for dinner and the Timbers-Red Bulls match. Good food, exciting match (tho we should have made 3-1 stand up instead of letting the bastards escape with a point...) and then home to bed.So. Maybe this whole Father's Day nonsense isn't so bad after all.

As Pinkie Pie herself would say; ya gotta care.

View from the Bluff

Just finished a couple of cold, rainy days drilling on something called "Oaks Bluff" down in Sellwood.I like Sellwood, one of Portland's older "inner suburbs", much like my own St. Johns. Like St. Johns, Sellwood was a pioneer town in the Portland basin, founded by one John Sellwood, an Episcopalian divine who wandered here in the Earlies and got himself a Donation Land Claim, one of those nifty deals that let you grab up a couple hundred acres or three of rich Oregon bottomland if you got here ahead of everyone else.

Well, except this pesky injuns, but the smallpox and forty-rod'll see them sorted.

Anyway, Sellwood has been absorbed by Portland...

(just as an aside here, I often wonder why the City of Portland doesn't simply move out to the northwest and swallow up the remainder of Multnomah County that lies down the Columbia from the city. As you can see from the map Portland - the red bit - sits smack in the middle with the bulk of unincorporated Multnomah County lies east of the Sandy River, predominantly the Cascade foothills and the western Columbia Gorge along with various little towns such as Dodson, Cascade Locks, and Corbett. The west County is scraps and bits, with the largest single piece the eastern half of Sauvie Island but nost of the rest tiny assarts in Forest Park and oddball little cul-de-sacs between the City and Washington County to the southwest. The City could annex the west County and become the City and County of Portland, and Multnomah County would consist of the eastern part, all the countrified parts. If I was the mayor, I'd go for it. Perhaps it's just as well I'm not, then...)

...and become a pleasant little neighborhood, partly residential and partly semi-trendy little shops in a very Portland-y sort of locals-only kind of way.Mojo's Valentine's present, for example, was a gift card from "Sock Dreams"; only in Portland, and especially in Sellwood, do you get a funky little shop that sells only footwear, from toe socks through cashmere all the way to flirty stockings.

So it wasn't a bad thing, working along the bluff overlooking Oaks Bottom. It's not often that you get to work and watch a bald eagle worrying away at the carp it hooked out of the pond nearby.The days were an amalgam of a Portland February, going from a dim overcast to driving rain and wind, back to high clouds broken by a sunny ten minute springtime, before returning to the mizzling rain. The weather kept the crowds indoors but Portland in winter means rain, and Portlanders still venture out in it, layered in fleece and gore-tex in pairs and alone.

And their dogs, do, too. One of the less pleasant aspects of the trail down Oaks Bluff was the quantity and distribution of used dog food. I once thought that I lived near the Pacific Northwest Strategic Dogshit Reserve, but after two days observing the carelessness with which Sellwood deals with its dog's eggs I'm tempted to race out to McKenna Park up here and roll about in the fetid grass in apology to North Portland's dogs and dog owners. We are paragons by comparison.So the dog plop, and the irking unconcern with which the owners let their dumb chums race about the wildlife area; whilst I'm sure that every doggie mommy and daddy think that they and their furbaby are Portland's Speshul Snowflakes there's about a fucking bajillion mutts running around the Rose City - our parks overflow with them - and only about a dozen bald eagles. You get the rest of the parks, nature preserves, and soccer fields. Oaks Bottom is supposed to be for the wild things.

The wild things were out and about, too, even in the rain. Busy flocks of bushtits, chickadees, and kinglets - the small canopy skulkers that band together in the winter to forage - rioted through the treetops which, given the steep slope, were at eye level with us. Comorants and herons hunted the pond, geese browsed the fields. Even the park squirrels seemed a little more untamed than our NoPo powerline wire-walkers.Another Portlander was out for a walk today, dressed in the usual layers of warm and waterproof, noticible only by her somewhat odd and deliberate pace. Her movement caught my eye but I couldn't see anything to explain the careful way she moved until her path turned along the base of the bluff and she came close enough that I could tell that whilst from the ankles up she was well-protected against the cold rain below that she was completely naked.

It takes a rare and hardy soul to stroll barefoot about Portland in February; inside my insulated, steel-toed boots and wool socks my feet were cold just looking at hers. But she trod along, placing her bare soles down in a manner appropriately cautious in a public place known to contain broken bottle-glass, metal bits, and discarded junkies' works along with the more common if more odiferous unscooped poop. She seemed very confident that her barefoot march would not end badly, and I was fascinated enough to watch her out of sight; she walked unscathed out of my view.We finished our work, wrestled the small drilling rig, the power generator, augers, buckets, the wheelbarrow full of tools and wherewithal down the switchbacks at the end of the trail and out onto the flat, loaded the truck, and the drillers drove off down the muddy track to leave me to climb slowly back up to Sellwood in the early-gathering dark.

Rosebud...

I went to the Derby last weekend and brought home a purple shirt with the logo of Portland's Rose City Rollers junior team, the Rosebuds, on it.

Little Miss looooved her new "sleepy-shirt". "Purple is my MOST favorite color!" she proclaimed. I explained that the purple was the color of the Rosebuds uniforms, that the Rosebuds were these cool girls who skated on the flat track and did cool stuff."What's a rosebud?" asked little girl. I explained that rosebuds were little roses, baby roses, like the big flower only all curled up. "Are they pretty?" she asked. "Do they smell sweet?"

"As pretty and sweet as you, little one." I assured her, "You are my little Rosebud."

"I don't want to be pretty and sweet," stated the Girl, sitting up, "I want to skate the flat track and be called Kung Pow Chickie and knock all the other girls on their butt-butts!"


OK, I made up that last part.

What she did was just cuddle down against me and sigh.

And then ran off to climb the walls.Hmmm.

I think there she may just be a future Rosebud, at that...

Let's Roll!

I want to solicit you.

Whaaaaaat?!?

Get your mind out of the gutter, man!

I'm not that kind of girl. Besides, I'm not sure if I could provide adequate value for the money.

No, I'm talking about our terrific Portland Rose City Rollers and their Quest For a New Floor!The gals have been skating their butts off for six years now, and for all that they still provide the best show on wheels in Portland, their old track floor is just about whipped. They sure could use some help with a new one.

So follow the link and whip out a double sawbuck and get a bad girl off the street and onto the flat track, where she can kick some ass like a crazy monkey.Because a bad girl is a terrible thing to waste.

Axe to the Head

So remember the "No Pity" scarf billboard?

Here's the latest addition;I don't know quite what to think.

I like the graphic, but why the babe (other than the general likeability of babes in general)? Why not kit her out in a Timbers strip? With the blue shirt (and if you don't recognize the logo in the lower right) she looks more like she's flogging some sort of "Don't Go In The Woods" Paulette Bunyan-the-Slasher flick.

Here's a thought: how about reproducing this only with Timbers fans in the same pose? Moms, kids, dudes, dudettes...make the connection. Are you listening, Timbers marketeers?

Riddle wrapped in an enigma

Part of the entertainment of blogs and blogging is the mystery of them.

Here's a good example. "D.D. Tinzeroes" the blog seems to have had a lifespan of about three years, from 2006 to 2009.

The blogger, who seems to be a Portland urbanite, possibly a grad student, raconteur, historian, and great consumer of pop culture both present and past, appears to have begun the blog with the idea of documenting some sort of map he was making of old Portland streetcar lines.The map itself and everything connected with the project has disappeared; if you follow the various links you get the dreaded 404 Error - Page Not Found. The blogger seems to have been involved in the "Platial", something called a "social mapping site" that nose-dived early this year. So all Tinzeroe's hard work, all his trolley line maps, are gone into that aetherial void space where lost Internet stuff goes when the website dies. The only remainder are the short blog posts that picket Tinzeroe's site in 2006 and 2007.

The thing is, the trolley line posts are really pretty fucking brilliant. The author finds old city maps as well as historical photos of the trolleys and their surroundings. And Tinzeroes is a good enough historian to know that history is just people living before the reader, so he makes sure to bring the human interest.Like here, where he memorializes a completely forgotten tragedy that struck four families on April 27, 1897 (he wrongly reports the accident date as the 28th, which was the date it appeared in the New York Times) when a trolley on the Mount Tabor line derailed crossing the trestle that bridged the Hawthorne Springs slough - in itself a fascinatingly forgotten piece of Portland, the wetlands and watercourses that drained the then-boggy inner East Portland lowlands - and fell into the water, killing three people; one W. W. Blanchard, described as a "laborer",
Newton Hanson, an eighteen-year-old who may have been either in high school or also working as a "laborer" and an unfortunate woman identified only as "(a)n unknown young lady". Tinzeroes says that a fourth was so badly injured that he, or she, died in hospital later, but I cannot trace the source of this.There must have been a Blanchard or two, perhaps a Missus Blanchard, a set of Hanson parents, a beau of the unknown young lady, or perhaps a sister...all of them grieved for their beloveds, drowned in a ridiculous trolley crash; April 27th must have been the most terrible day in history to them. Tinzeroe's momento mori brings these people, their families and friends, their lovers and loves, back to life for a brief moment. I'd say that's not a bad sort of gift to give.Or this gem of a little post, about the Portland Heights line and its timber trestle that ran from downtown Portland to the Vista Heights neighborhood along what was then Chapman Street. Chapman has disappeared, either subsumed in SW 18th or dug out to create the Vista Ridge tunnels in the late Sixties and then developed for the narrow, off-camber streets now typical of the flanks of the Heights.Look at this tremendously Victorian creation, vigorously free of guardrails, safety barriers, or, indeed, any sort of fall or crash protection at all.Which gives you pause when you read that a car crashed two days after the structure was opened in February, 1890, while on July 11th, "Car No. 13 broke loose from the cable at the powerhouse & rolled down 18th to Jefferson where it overturned. Car No. 18 then did the exact same thing & slammed into the overturned Car 13!"

Hmm. Maybe I'll walk.

The blog is full of this stuff, along with the random old building, idiosyncratic restaraunt reviews, historical trivia, personal maundering and marginalia that makes blogs so entertaining.Or at least to me. But to the blogger of "D.D. Tinzeroes", eventually, not so much.

The great days of the blog, the times when bandwidth fairly sang with trolleys and other Portland history, are over by 2008; suddenly the blog becomes almost exclusively about local 'zines and comics, random observations by the blogger, and review of science fiction and kaiju films. By 2009 things are getting sparse, and the final post, in May of this year, is a rather wan reflection of the time when "D.D. Tinzeroes" bestrode the narrow world of Portland historical blogging like a colossus; a snapshot of the urinals at Oaks Park, "near the roller rink".And that, it seems, is that.

Who was the man that knew so much about trolleys? Why did he start blogging? Why did he just stop caring about them? What is he doing now with the curiousity and knowledge that we get a glimpse of on his apparently-defunct blog?

We will probably never know. The result of his hard work and interest in the old rail line of Portland were his maps in Platial, which are as vanished as Lineal A.

Meanwhile his blog remains, idle in cyberspace, waiting like a left-behind book on an empty park bench for the passerby to stop and read, yet of its author- how he came to it, why he took it where he did, why he abandoned it - it is a mystery. It tells us nothing.

And never will.

The Girls In Their Summer Dresses

One nice thing about the warm weather is that the heavy clothes come off.

Nice, for me, because I like the freedom of going without heavy shoes, heavy coats, everything heavy, encompassing; I like the warmth without having to dress to obtain it.

And also nice, in that everyone else gets to come out of their winter clothes and into their light shirts and sandals.

And the Portland women, and girls, so dark and dour through the winter in their rainjackets, fleece, and heavy shoes bloom in a delicious profusion of color and movement.Floaty summer dresses, pretty tops in bright, sunny colors. Toes painted like candy lighten up sandals and flip-flops. Even their movements seem lighter and more joyful. They're lovely, and I enjoy their sudden emergence from winter's drizzly hibernation.

One odd thing I have noticed this summer more than before, though, is the number of women (in particular, though I've been seeing men doing this, too) cycling in flip-flops. This seems peculiarly dangerous; as a kid I scraped the hell out of my foot when I blew out of a cheap rubber flip-flop riding my bike. In a bike-y town like Portland it seems odd that so many people are riding this way. But, there, I'm always amazed at how many Portlanders ride without helmets. Perhaps the cycling-in-flips is just part of the casual style of this town. Seems chancy to me...

One family member who is NOT so enthused about the weather is our little cat Lily. She hates the heat and spends much of her time sleeping in the shade or trying to find shade. That, and she always gets flea-ridden this time of year. She is allergic to their bites and tears at herself until the fleabane medicine and the winter's cold drive them away again.

Speaking of bicycling, I drove home from the Timbers game tonight - nice 2-nil win over Miami - and had to stop at the corner of Willamette and Parks to let a group of riders go by. I turned down Willamette and found that the entire bike lane was full of people on bikes; cruisers, hybrids, trail-a-bikes, unicycles...people wearing tutus, tuxedos, neon, wizard's hats, bridal gowns, all manner and color of chemlight glowsticks sprouting from bikes, helmets, and riders.

Turns out that this is something called the "Night Ride", and it happens every July. I couldn't resist; I stopped at the corner of N. McKenna and Willamette, found someone's put-out-for-the-taking chest of drawers sitting in the city strip along Willamette, and leaned on it watching the show. The riders looked like they were having a great time; there was lots of laughter, lots of bells ringing and little horns honking. I waved to the cheerful unable to stifle a silly grin myself. It was all very goofy, and very Portland. I stayed and enjoyed the impromptu night parade until the last little group of stragglers passed by and left the street to the cold streetlights and the silent houses.

But now it's late, and I have to get to bed.

Hope your summer Sunday is a good one.