Other Notable Blogs

Cafe Unknown
Travel, History and Portland Oregon by Dan Haneckow

Jack Bog's Blog
By Jack Bogdanski of Portland, Oregon. (Like he needs any other introduction by now? -- A.B.C.)

For Portlanders Only
"Why buy a mattress anywhere else?"

Good Stuff NW
Featuring stuff that is good in the NW

LOST Magazine
LOST Magazine is an online monthly magazine that combines elements of many other literary, online, and national magazines with a singular mission--to reclaim in writing lost people, places, and things.

Mapes on Politics
Way West of the Beltway

Outside Is America
A journal about photography, roadtrips, trains and life, with occasional detours into movies, baseball, music, family and more.

The Photographers' Railroad Page
Good photos usually have good stories to go with them.... The goal of The Photographers' Railroad Page is to provide an outlet for top quality photographs and their story.

Portland Food & Drink
Throwing Ourselves on the Grenade of Bad Food to Save You

Portland Transport Blog
A Conversation About Access & Mobility in the Portland/Vancouver Region

PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media -- and booksellers

Rambling West
The musings of a farmer with a typewriter and camera

Stumptown Confidential
Documenting Portland, Oregon architecture, history, and culture through photos, postcards, and words.

The Unauthorized Observer
Observations on faith, photography, trains, baseball, the city where I live (Fullerton, Calif.), anything that I find funny (a lot of things) or irritating (some things) and various incidents involving friends and family.

Under the Weather
...the open road, fatherhood, family life, music, railroads, photography, popular and unpopular culture, sex, violence, religion, the oppression of consumerism and capitalism and the general bullshit that makes up modern life.

Urban Planning Overlord
A blog to counter the myths, lies, and demagoguery others use against sound city planning to further their own ends, fair and foul - but also to urge the profession itself to pull back from the occasional wretched PC exces.

VanPortlander
Living in Vancouver; working in Portland. I have some thoughts.

Whiskey, Texas
...life and experiences in Texas and the Southwest. Recurring themes: Photography, railroads, fading ads / ghost signs, fallen-flag railroad logos, boxcars, bicycling, Texas music, pop culture, sports, road trips, literature, kids and family.

World Scott
The Travel Writing and Photography of Scott Lothes

Blegs & Bargains

 Amazon Book Wishlist

 B&H Wishlist

 My eBay Listings

 Powell's Books Wishlist

Monday, October 29, 2007

Regarding the 511 Building in Northwest Portland:

" 'No other available building in Portland has so much ground-floor space,' said [Ron] Paul, whose organization recently decided against trying to locate in nearby Union Station."

Labels: Portland, Railroads, Transportation

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I previously reviewed The Night Journal both for TRAINS Magazine as well as Amazon about a year ago. Digging through the author's website, I discovered it is now available in paperback.

Get it here from Powell's, or here from Amazon.

Labels: Book Reviews, Books, Railroads

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Bob Ross, television painting guru, the man who defined fantasy-land do-it-yourself painting. He was to art what the Ginsu knife was to kitchen cutlery. Introducing the art of oil painting to the great unwashed masses, he inspired a cult fan base devoted to his smooth voice, zen-like demeanor, and iconic afro.

Ross believed we all have the capacity for artistic talent. This echoes some of Jonathan Hale's thinking. And I think it is true too. But if so, doesn't that take away from some of what's special about artistry? Can a common talent be a valued one? If we could all sing like Placido Domingo, would Opera matter to us anymore?

But lets leave the realm of philosophy aside now, and venture into Bob's happy mountains. And what mountains they were, raised on the canvas with a few lithe sweeps of the palette knife! Ross was captivated, perhaps even obsessed with painting mountains. Perhaps this came from their exoticness; born in Florida, I remember him once saying that the highest hill in his childhood had been fifteen feet tall. Or perhaps his fascination came from his stint in the USAF, when he was stationed in Alaska.

Most "serious artists" -- you know the kind, they scoff down canapes and wine while explaining their vision in white-walled rooms to moneyed elites in every town over half-a-million population -- would consider Ross to be in a different world from them. Too low-brow. Too common. Sure, he was no great intellectual artist, and his talents were limited. He was afraid of portraits. His art teacher once told him to stick to bushes and trees, because that's where his heart lay. Might there have been a sarcastic comment there about his abilities? Perhaps, but I suspect with his "always-the-butter-side-up" attitude, Bob either didn't notice or didn't care. Instead he took the advice, and by all appearances he was happy with his bushes and trees. There's something about him that was inspiring. In a way he inspired me, certainly, as a small child, to continue painting. There's a pleasing fantasy to his landscapes, a simple escapism that is tranquil in a childish way.

For all the artistic seriousness that we intellectual painters have, we should be so lucky to find such happiness.

Bob Ross, who died on the Fourth of July in 1995, would have been 65 today. Happy birthday, Bob. Hope you're enjoying the company of your squirrels up there in a happy place, with happy little trees and happy mountains and happy little lakes.

Labels: Art

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Saturday, October 27, 2007

Okay, one last post before bed. To all my friends and former colleagues over at THE Magazine of Railroading, Happy 1027 Day!

Labels: Journalism, Media, Publishing, Railroads, Transportation

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Palouse River R.R. Company, Walla Walla, Washington, July 2007
Nikon N80, Nikon Nikkor 75-300 f/3.5-5.6 @ 300mm, exposure unrecorded. Kodak T400CN

Labels: Photography, Railroads

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I am an adherent of film-based photography. The advances of quality and ability in digital photography are by no means small. Add to this that a lot of friends shoot in digital. However, those aspects do not interest me. My background in the visual arts comes from painting, watercolor in specific. The textural, sensual feel of making the art, the sense of craft that comes from an all-analog process, these are the things that attract me to photography. This is why it's become a passion alongside my painting, instead of just a mechanical sketchbook.

Unfortunately my current living situation makes developing and printing at home impractical. In addition, developing slides is very nearly impossible at home, involving a process that is far more touchy and hazardous. Because of this, I've done most of my developing with labs. Portland, a capital of the advertising industry, was at one time blessed with pro labs who offered top notch work and fast turnaround.

Of course, the digital revolution has changed all that. My first pro lab, Wy'East Color, went out of business not long after the media industry implosion that followed the 2001 Dot Bomb. Following that, I began to use a gem of a lab, PhotoCraft. The lab was located on the third floor of the Oregon Pioneer Building. The base level of the building houses the famous Huber's. PhotoCraft offered a quick turnaround of 4 hours for film developing. The result was that whenever I needed to handle developing, I'd just hop an early express bus downtown, drop the film, then go kill four hours exploring downtown. I always meant to get to eating at Hubers, reasoning I'd stop by and have a Spanish Coffee and one of their trademark turkey sandwiches.

Earlier this year, the Photocraft offices moved one door down, to a smaller space. At the same time, they reduced their hours. I began to sense something might be closing in.

Fast forward to this August, I returned to Ohio to visit friends and do some photography. Once I returned, I had a small pile of Fuji slide film to deal with. Since I was broke, I tossed them in a Ziploc and threw them in my mini-fridge. Motivation didn't strike until a week ago. I hadn't been downtown since July, so I was looking forward to the trip, figuring I'd do a bit of walking around, maybe checking out the progress of construction on the Bus Mall. In through the doors of the building, up the elevator, down the hall... to a darkened door.

The course of things had finally taken it's toll. As of August 20th, the lab's retail film services had closed.

This isn't to say I'm without options. Thankfully, Blue Moon processes film as well as maintaining it's stock of retro-cool cameras and journalism-related gear. (It's like stepping into 1965 there.) But of course, there's no 4 hour turnaround at Blue Moon. Plus, they are located in St. Johns. As much as I love St. Johns with its nostalgic yet healthy blue collar feel, it's an additional twenty minutes away for me and not easily accessed via transit from the depths of suburbia.

I'm thankful for Blue Moon. Many places don't have it so good. And I have to say their work was excellent. But all the same, I'm saddened to see this latest turn of events. I'll always shoot real, honest-to-goodness black-and-white film, but at least as far as color photography goes, I suspect it's only a matter of time before I go digital.

Labels: Photography, Portland History, Technology

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Thursday, October 25, 2007

In Spring of 2005, TriMet was planning its "Green Line" extension to Clackamas Town Center. At the time, I was living in Olympia, but I was in Portland on assignment from TRAINS Magazine, doing a photo shoot and interviews for a story on Portland Union Station.

During the course of my research, I discovered one of those rare, history repeating moments. The new MAX line was being planned to run off the Steel Bridge and down to the Bus Mall just before Union Station. As a result, it would be "cutting off" two historically notable structures -- a closed firehouse at 3rd and Glisan, and a structure called "VC Tower".

VC Tower, for those of you who aren't railroad enthusiasts, is a two story brick switch control tower. it was built about the time that the current Steel Bridge was constructed. From inside of it, operators used to control the switches at the South end of Depot Yard at the feet of Union Station, as well as the junction of tracks that lead onto the bridge's lower deck. It was one of the last such manually operated switch towers in the country, having closed in 1997, when owner Union Pacific automated it all for remote control from its dispatching center in Omaha.

Since then, it sat empty, with most of its controls cut off but still intact. Over the last decade, it has been abused, left to the weather, lived in by transients, and subject to all the other prices that are paid by essentially abandoned buildings in an urban area.

What I learned on my shoot in Portland, however, was that the building had a potentially bright future. The North end of the bus mall was destined to become a major junction point for MAX, with tracks coming off the Steel Bridge dividing to loop along the mall. Rather than house the electronics for these switches in some nondescript aluminum box, TriMet decided to kill two birds with one stone; the switch gear would be installed inside of long-abandoned VC Tower.

Fast forward to the present. Just this week, TriMet began to make these plans into a reality. Out goes the old interlocking machine. Soon the building will be cleared out and prepared for the installation of 21st century switch and communication electronics. Although there will be no operators in the building, as there once had been, it's still essentially a return to the original duty for the structure. For a history addict like myself, the symmetry and poetry of this is irresistible.

Labels: Portland, Portland History, Technology, Transportation

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Saturday, October 20, 2007

My love of British cars -- or at least those that were deemed worthy of export to the United States -- should be no secret. I grew up in the back seat of a heavily modified red 1959 Triumph TR3. Over the years, members of my family have owned TR4's, TR6's, MGBs, MGB-GTs, Sunbeam Alpines, Austin-Healy Sprites... and that's all just in my lifetime! The car I perhaps have heard the most about, however -- after the TR3 anyway -- was a Mark II 3.8 Jaguar saloon. Made most famous as the car that BBC/PBS' Inspector Morse drove, my parents owned a Burgundy red model until the late 1970s. It fell victim to the expanding family disease, and my only first-hand knowledge of it comes from a burled wood dashboard spare that my father has kept ever since. It is a very nice dashboard.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that growing up, I lusted after Jaguars, first the XJS, then later the XK. It's perhaps because of this that I've always held a soft spot for the Jaguar car company, and cheered it on even while knowing I was far from likely to be able to own one anytime in the foreseeable future. When the troubled maker announced the new C-XF concept, I was fascinated, and wrote about it here. Stylish, ultra-modern, and shapely, the car broke many Jaguar traditions in an attempt to hold up one very crucial one, the notion of a sedan that had guts, what Jag designer Ian Callum called, in typically British jargon, a "sports saloon".

Jaguar's in a deep bind, and its troubles are much the same as Cadillac's had been for the last twenty years, namely being the "fuddy-duddy" car, with little excitement or passion. Result? Declining sales and a shrinking, increasingly geriatric buyer base. Not exactly a growth formula. Some of the U.S. executives of the company hatched a plan to save the company in 2004 that would have seen the maker return to it's racing-inspired roots. The plan, however, was killed by defenders of the status-quo.

Now, however, the upper echelon at the Cat seems to have learned the hard lesson. Sales of the X-Type, meant to be an All-Wheel-Drive BMW-killer, never met expectations, while time has shown the S-Type to be an over-styled poor substitute for the Mark II whose styling it more parodies than parrots. Ford has put the company up for sale, placing all the more pressure on the company to prove itself healthy enough to be bought for more than just a Chinese name-badge grab.

Make no mistake. Jaguar needs the XF. Since revealing the C-XF, (Concept, XF), Jaguar removed the X-Type from the U.S. market; the XF production variant of the C-XF will, once it hits the market, replace both of Jaguar's middle-market sedans. If it succeeds, Jaguar will prove itself a viable investment. If it fails, it may sink the company.

But what would it look like? Production cars, industry wide, are rarely as exciting as the concept cars they are based upon. Despite raising pulse rates, concepts are usually far watered down, in fear of the risk of aggressive styling losing the pre-existing customer base for the product. Caddy's angular transition was perhaps one of the rare exceptions to this rule. (It's also one that's paying off well -- the CTS has proven a winner for Cadillac owner GM). Would Jaguar follow the rule, and water down the C-XF to a milquetoast sedan?

Recently, Jaguar revealed the new XF. The exterior styling is by far more conservative than the C-XF, most notably reducing the radical headlight shapes and toning the overall body shape into a more submissive shape. Ironically like the Cadillac CTS, in some ways photos do not do justice to the styling. At first, this was a disappointment, but I have to admit the styling has grown on me. This photo alone sells me on the heartbeat racing Jaguar feel the car has, in a way that no XJ series sedan, even the original XJ-6 of 1968, has had.

And the interior? While not quite as dramatic as the neon-glow infused C-XF interior, it still sports a clean minimal look heralded by some as the best luxury sports sedan interior on the market. Indeed, from a functional standpoint, it was designed with Apple Computer, known for their elegant interfaces. Note, too, the return of that Jaguar standby, burled wood trim. While a step into the past, the treatment appears to me modern enough not to be an anchor, while traditional enough to satisfy the need for some warmth as well as brand continuity.

What does it translate to for Jaguar? With such an iconic brand, any step away from the inertia of conservative, backward-looking designs will be met with a love-hate reaction. As Car Magazine UK states, "some insiders call it a Marmite design -- one whose flavour you'll either love or hate." The maker has rolled its dice... and it looks promising. Early reports indicate that there are now more U.S. pre-orders for the XF than supply; in short the XF appears to be on the path to selling out its first batch on U.S. soil.

And if you're Jaguar, you're hoping that's going to last more than a few months.

Labels: Automobiles, Design, Technology, Transportation

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Sunday, October 14, 2007

I've been watching with interest for the last month or so as the City of Portland's proposal to rename Interstate Avenue became a political boondoggle. Although I have strong feelings on the matter, I've stayed out of commenting on it, largely because I am not a citizen of fair PDX, and since I don't brook outsiders telling me what to do, I felt it only fair to practice what I preach. But the notion of rewriting history is such an anathema to me that I just can't keep my mouth shut. It's a pretty typical failing of mine.

For those who haven't followed along, in September of this year, the City of Portland proposed renaming Interstate Avenue for the labor activist Cesar Chavez. Chavez is best known for having begun a unionization of farm laborers, and is considered a heroic figure by many in the Mexican and Latino communities. If the renaming takes place, Chavez would join Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King as the third non-Portlander to have a street renamed for them in recent memory. After having... questionably... rushed through the renaming of Portland Boulevard to Rosa Parks Way in 2006, this renaming struck home with many on Interstate as highly inappropriate. For one, the neighborhoods had recently emerged with a new and positive identity hinged on the Interstate name, thanks largely to the opening of a light rail line down the avenue in 2003. Dubbed "Interstate MAX", it helped to cement the identity as a positive moniker at long last. But more recently, the city began considering an up-zoning program that would replace large swaths of single and dual story housing and commercial space with 4-and-higher story condominiums and apartments. Already agitated by this dramatic proposed change, the city stepped in to suggest a street renaming to go along with it.

Apparently, someone turned the water up too fast on the frog, and the frog jumped.

Angry residents have now crowded at least two public meetings to voice opposition. Lined up against them are activists from the Mexican and Latino community who believe that Chavez deserves an honored place in Portland, despite having no direct personal connection to the city. While some got ugly and uttered harsh words regarding the place of the Mexican community within the city, there is a much less harsh truth behind the rhetoric; whether or not you agree Chavez ought to be honored, there is no connection in any way between Chavez and the neighborhoods along Interstate. The black, Polish, German, or Scandanavian heritages are or were all important to this street, but no Latin cultures have ever had a strong presence here. There is no relevance between Chavez and Insterstate, unlike, say, Rosa parks or MLK and the streets that their names were applied to.

In the end, though, any renaming is something that should be undertaken with care. To add to the history of a city is one thing, but to rewrite it is another. It is said that those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it; a casual attitude about history is foolishness. Renaming Interstate to Cesar Chavez Boulevard isn't a bad idea because Interstate is a distinctive name, or because Chavez doesn't deserve honoring, but because of the process such a renaming reflects; it's a process of systemic history editing. (For more excellent coverage of the history of Interstate, as well as the name change controversy, see this post at Dan Haneckow's excellent blog, Cafe Unknown.)

Sadly, it seems a human penchant to rewrite our past in an attempt to make a more expedient present. How often we bow to the force of PC -- during WW1, it was fashionable to bash Germans, and many a Schmidt became a Smith, and you stuck Liberty Cabbage on your hot-dog, instead of Saurkraut on your Bratwurst. How the Hamburger survived with it's name intact is only to be guessed. I am also reminded of a peculiarly suburban plague, the "named subdivision". I can't count how many times that a plaque on a pile of bricks at the corner of the latest cracker-box subdivision gets accepted by new residents as if it is a neighborhood identity rather than a simple real-estate branding that a developer installed. "I live in the Arbor Arms neighborhood". The what? A new one opened up at the rate of about one a week during the 1990s, and none of them had any relation to history. Thankfully, when TriMet extended light rail to Washington County, they resurrected station names from the old Oregon Electric interurban whose right-of-way it used, not only preserving but rediscovering the history of the area.

It seems to me that the City of Portland didn't anticipate the kind of reaction it would get with this renaming proposal. Some Commissioners -- notably the crotchety Randy Leonard -- are already triangulating their way into an escape route that lets them out of renaming Interstate without giving up on the idea of naming a street for Chavez. Perhaps he remembers, as does a historian friend of mine, the potential third rail that can be uncovered when you threaten a neighborhood in Portland with drastic change; the Mount Hood Freeway proposal of the 1970s lead to the "neighborhood association revolution" that catapulted Neil Goldschmidt into power and swept away the stodgy status-quo Portland government of the era. The only surprise to me is, how long until mayoral wannabe Sam Adams rides Randy's triangulating coat-tails on this one?

Labels: Civics, Portland, Portland History, Public Policy, Transportation

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