Khris Soden

The Buckman Historic District Needs Your Help!

2011-04-13T22:03:00.000-07:00

If you follow my blog at all, you'll already be aware that I'm on the all-volunteer Buckman Historic Association, a group that is working towards the goal of establishing a National Historic District in Buckman. I've written about my personal interest in creating this district before, but this month the Southeast Examiner published an article that serves as a great overview of the progress of the effort to date. [Update: the Oregonian has reported on our efforts as well.] We're at the point of the project where we have to perform an Intensive Level Survey, where we need to document every building in the district. That's nearly 500 buildings that need a one- or two- paragraph description, and that's where we need your help!

Can you write a coherent paragraph or two about a building? Do you have a working architectural vocabulary? If you do, could you consider lending a hand? Maybe you could write the descriptions or just one or two buildings. Maybe you'll find it enjoyable and you'll even do a half-dozen!

Maybe you like the idea of creative writing, but just need a subject to push you along... in that case, why not take a shot at describing one of our buildings? Even if you don't think that your writing could help, it may help give us a framework to work with.

Here's an example from the Department of the Interior's thrilling, mile-a-minute text How to Complete the National Register Registrations Form:

The Edward Jones House is a 1 and 1/2 story, frame, Arts and Crafts style bungalow with a modified rectangular plan, an intersecting gable roof, and a front porch. The walls and roof are finished with wood shingles, and the foundation, chimneys, and porch piers are built of fieldstone. Above the front porch is an open-timbered end gable with Japanese-influenced joinery. The interior of the house reflects the Arts and Crafts style in the oak woodwork and built-in cabinetry. The house is in the Shadyside neighborhood, a middle-class subdivision with tree-lined streets and 50-foot wide lots. The house fronts west onto Oak Street and is set behind a modest, cultivated lawn which slopes slightly toward the street. Behind the house, a rock garden incorporates the stonework of the foundation and chimney and is enclosed by a stone wall. A garage, echoing the house in design and materials, is set at the northeast corner of the lot and reached by a straight driveway from the street. The property is in excellent condition and has had very little alteration since its construction.

Do you think you could help us out? Maybe you're friends or family with a civic planner, an architect, or a historic preservationist that you could send this along to. If this doesn't sound like your cup of tea, do you think that you'd be able to help us out in some other manner? We need to do outreach and fund-raising, and could use assistance with that. If you can even lend just a few hours of your time to this cause, I'd really appreciate it!

If you're able to help out, contact me either by email or give me a text or a call: 503.442.9703.

Some Antique Shop Scores

2011-04-09T18:30:00.000-07:00

Heather and I went to one of our favorite antique malls today, the Monticello Antique Marketplace, and I picked up a couple of great things that I thought were worth sharing.

First:

A picaresque photo postcard of Portland, featuring the old bus mall! The photo was taken at about SW 5th and Washington, looking northwest on 5th. The photographer was standing very near the original location of the sculpture Kvinneakt, which is better known as the statue in the"Expose Yourself to Art" photo. (Totally aside, I had know idea that this photo ever existed. Keep Portland Weird indeed!) One of the things that is bothering me about this photo is that I can't figure out the time period in which it was taken. My guess is the late 90s, but I think the answer probably lays in determining when that took that model of bus out of service (the school bus-colored bus in the background is the 19 Glisan at a Beaver stop (I really miss the nature icons that defined the stops!).) The most visible building in the background is the Oregon Trail Building, which was repainted somewhere around 2005, I think.

Anyway, I'll present the second one without comment (aside to say that I believe it's from the late 1930s. Anyone have a better guess?):

Make sure you read it carefully, it's not your ordinary missed phone call memo.

Buckman, Portland, Oregon and its future

2011-03-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

Buckman, the neighborhood I live in, is developing rapidly, and in unexpected ways. It is for this reason that I'm a volunteer on the Buckman Historic Association, a group that is trying to designate an area from SE 12th to SE 20th and from Burnside to Belmont as a place recognized by the National Register of Historic Places. This part of the city has always been a middle-class suburb, and our goal is to maintain the space as such and preserve the character of the area. We're presenting our goal at the next Buckman Community Association meeting (Thursday, March 10th, Central Catholic High School), and hosting a panel of experts who will give short presentations and answer questions regarding the advantages and disadvantages of being in a district that's on the National Register of Historic Places. I encourage you to join us in order to advocate for this designation.

Five years ago, I was sitting at the B-Side and talking to a friend about the then-recent announcement of the Burnside Bridgehead development: a plan to build a retail and housing hub at the eastern foot of the Burnside Bridge. We were talking about how the lower part of Burnside - everything west of 12th Avenue, towards the river - was set to blow up. If we were developers, we surmised, we'd be buying lots up left and right. I suggested that the vacant lot behind the Plaid Pantry would be the first place to go, but I was wrong: the first big development came farther up, when construction started on the Burnside Rocket building. It took a couple of years before my suggestion of the vacant lot started being developed, and it came in the form of the BSide6. Around the same time, rontoms was being worked on. Our predictions seemed to be coming true.

But the Bridgehead was put off by the near-collapse of our economic system, and the assumed development didn't happen. Between then and now, however, something much more significant happened: the Burnside-Couch couplet became a reality. Burnside and Couch were turned into one way streets from the Burnside Bridge to 15th Avenue, and traffic lights were installed at every intersection.

I'd been following the progress of the couplet since around 2007, but apparently hadn't been paying enough attention: I was surprised when, during the construction, I noticed that traffic lights were going in at each intersection. I was fascinated. I mused (probably on multiple boring occasions) to my wife, Heather, about it: "It's like a small town downtown!" "Do you see how it's at every intersection? Next thing you know, there will be lights on Ankeny and Davis - they're preparing in advance!" "Man, this is going to blow up the neighborhood."

Indeed, the Burnside-Couch couplet is blowing up the neighborhood. I've been a big proponent of the project, as there is a lot of under-utilized space (read: parking lots) in this part of town, but for every action, there are unintended consequences. And these consequences came fast. In December, the owners of two 1900s-era apartment houses served eviction notices to their tenants in order to build a mixed-use building. In the same month, the owners of the Galaxy, at 9th and Burnside, submitted their proposal to demolish the existing structure in order to build a new one. And just this month, the owners of the Foursquare Church have proposed turning their parking lot into a new mixed-use senior center.

I opposed the demolition of the apartment building and the Galaxy (the latter of which I blogged about), because they destroy the existing historic elements of the neighborhood, but I'm generally supportive of the building proposed at SE 12th & Burnside, primarily because it is currently only occupied by a parking lot (a use that I am militantly opposed to). The proposed building at SE 12th & Burnside, however, has a request that the other two projects didn't have: a request for a height variance. The height limit in this part of the Buckman neighborhood is 45 feet, while portions of this building will reach 65 feet. That's a significant departure from the height of the rest of the buildings in this part of the neighborhood.

The neighborhood is blowing up, but not in the way I had imagined. For the one project that removes a parking lot, there are two that destroy structures that help define the present and the past tense of the neighborhood. This isn't going to change; indeed, it's going to accelerate. There's already talk of putting metered parking in the Central Eastside. There are many structures in the neighborhood that property owners may consider out-dated and ripe for demolition when they see the potential value of the lot that they sit on.

I'm pro-development and anti-NIMBYism, but I'm against development that ignores the environmental and historical benefits of re-using or re-purposing existing structures. Tearing a building down - even with the intent to recycle materials - is never as energy-efficient in the long term as maintaining the building. And when a building is demolished, or renovated beyond recognition, we're robbing future generations of that building. I personally have little appreciation for the Galaxy as an example of Googie architecture, but how do I know that it's not the next generation's Portland Public Market?

Lower Buckman - the region below 12th, the area that is being developed most rapidly - has had its character irrevocably altered over the years. Once a part of downtown East Portland, containing late 1800s and 1900s era mixed-use buildings and residences, lower Buckman succumbed to the automobile in the middle of the 20th century, with many of its lots being turned into auto dealerships and parking lots. It's easy now to imagine that a similar type of massive change couldn't happen to the existing residential area of Buckman, but there's no guarantee against it, especially when there is such an opportunity for financial gain on the part of property owners who may be more interested in money than they are in their community.

Update: Based on a conversation with Anne Richardson over on Facebook, I changed the description of Buckman as a "working-class enclave" to read "middle-class suburb".

How to Read Local Landscapes at the Architectural Heritage Center

2011-02-06T12:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had the good fortune (seriously, I won tickets) to attend the presentation by professor Reiko Hillyer, "Marking Our Territory: How to Read Local Landscapes", which is part of the Oregon Humanities "The Conversation Project: A New Chautauqua" program. (I had to look up the meaning of Chautauqua). The title of the presentation doesn't give a particularly succinct description of it's main thematic, but this sentence from the press release helps: "One of the most persistent ways people exert power over others is to control their access to space." This is a topic that I have considerable interest in, as I think it's important to recognize the subtle ways that the built environment can influence our perceptions and behaviors.

The program was divided into two parts: first Hillyer started with presenting an overview of the basic thesis, and the latter portion was a group conversation that Hillyer ably moderated. I'm always a little leery of democratic group conversations, especially among lay-people (nevermind that this was an interested/motivated group of lay-people), because I find that the central topic can be easily derailed by someone who wants to turn the discussion to their own personal experiences and narratives, regardless of how directly relevant their thoughts might be. I'll be the first to admit that my attitude is flawed: my feeling of a voice "derailing" a conversation is my own perception; it's clearly important for the person speaking, and indeed, may even be reflective of other people's thoughts and opinions. Group conversations and democracy are sloppy things by nature and necessity, and everyone has the right to speak. Please accept this as my too-lengthy explanation of why I'll focus on the former rather than the latter part of the program.

Hillyer started by talking about the idea of "landscape" and how it is defined, noting that is often framed metaphorically or pastorally. When we are talking about a landscape painting, for example, it generally conjures mental images of undisturbed nature: rolling hills, majestic peaks, perhaps a winding river. The idea of landscape often ignores the vernacular of the built environment: the arterials of a city, dense downtowns, industrial waterfronts, big box strips with acres of parking. This is all part of our day-to-day landscape, and it affects us and our behaviors, although it is so common-place as to be rendered invisible. In not seeing this landscape, and recognizing it as such, we do not question the nature of it or ask why it exists in the fashion that it does. Without intentionally acknowledging the built environment, it becomes something that just happens; something that just is, much like the rolling hills, majestic peaks and winding rivers. Except, of course, the built environment exists only through past specific human intention.

Along this line of thought, Hillyer posed questions to us such as: who gets to decide what constitutes a neighborhood? It's a good question, especially when taking in historical events like the practice of redlining, which undeniably forms an element of the modern demographics of certain neighborhoods (Alameda is an example that comes immediately to my mind). She talked towards the power behind the control of space, how it can be used to reinforce segregation, or to delineate the perceived appropriate use of space. In terms of racial and economic parity, the practical application of space as a means of control can have devastating effects: take the effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans for example.

On the psychological control and definition of space, she showed us this image, which I felt was particularly compelling:

This picture of a segregated water fountain from the South illustrates that segregation wasn't about maintaining a physical distance between races as much as it was using the space to define the superiority of whites over blacks. The space is shared, but the symbolism of the two different fountains is as obvious as it is oppressive. This was part of a landscape, and someone constructed that portion of architecture with a specific thought and intention.

Portland's racist past was addressed, as well. There were the overt forms of racism in the city, from the "We Cater to White Trade Only" signs in lunch counter windows of downtown Portland in the mid-40s to the Coon-Chicken Inn on Sandy Boulevard (which exists today as Clyde's Prime Rib), but also the much more destructive public works projects like the construction of Memorial Coliseum, I-5 and the Fremont Bridge, and the planned expansion of Emmanuel Hospital. This is a subject that interests me greatly, because I think that our city has a long and continuing history of targeting minority areas for re-development, and I think it's important for them to be acknowledged in order for them to be prevented in the future. Other large-scale "urban renewal" fiascoes include the destruction of the Jewish and Italian neighborhoods of South Portland through the South Auditorium project, the destruction of the original Chinatown through the Morrison Bridge expansion, and the further harassment of the black community through the construction of the Minnesota Freeway. Oh, and of course: Vanport.

The presentation continued, as Hillyer addressed ways in which the built environment can also be reclaimed by the minority or by dissenting voices. She used lunch counter sit-ins as an example of political acts that occur as a protest to the proscribed use of a space. She talked about monuments to Confederate generals erected during the Jim Crow era before showing us an alternate - and very provocative - example of a monument that addresses the experience of the Civil Rights era:

She discussed the semantics of our remembered past as well, showing us a historical marker reading "The Massacre at Wounded Knee", where "Massacre" had clearly been added over a previous word. The previous word was "Battle", and the change reflected a different framing of events. These semantics are also reflected in what we choose to preserve, and how we preserve it. The Paul Revere house in Boston was being used as an Italian grocery and bank in the late 19th century before it was purchased and returned to a semblance of its 18th-century purposes. Through this preservation, the memory of the structure as a home to Paul Revere is honored, while its previous importance to an ethnic group is erased. In this example, it was made clear that preservation itself is a political act.

Not all modifications to the environment around us have a specific racial or classist subtext, but the whole program served as a great lesson that in any type of development there is a value judgment that is being made. Forest or farmland? Farmland or suburb? Portland Avenue or Rosa Parks Way? "Jump City" [ugh.] or inner-city Home Depot?

Early on in the growth of Portland, the men developing the city made a specific decision to set aside the Park Blocks as one contingent whole - not the divided North and South Park Blocks that we know of today. It was a generation removed from the original developers that started building on the blocks that separate the Park Blocks today, and the resulting legacy of that had left a couple of blocks that were merely used as surface parking lots. One of those lots has recently been returned to the public domain as Directors Park. It's the same type of value judgment that was made decades ago that resulted in the transformation of a Meier and Frank parking structure into Pioneer Courthouse Square. (There were also private profits made off of public funds in both of these cases, which shouldn't be discounted in the equation, but I digress.)

This program left me inspired, and made me feel like I have an improved vocabulary for how I regard our urban landscape now, and I'm going to make the assumption that others in attendance felt the same way. There was quite a bit in this presentation that I feel like I'm not doing justice to, and I'm not sure that Reiko Hillyer will have the opportunity to make this presentation again, but if she does, I would strongly encourage you to experience it for yourself. I knew a few other people that were in attendance, specifically my pal Patrick Tsukuda, Dan Haneckow of the fantastic blog Cafe Unknown, and Val Ballestrem, Education Manager of the Architectural Heritage Center, and I hope that they all will provide their own accounts of the experience as a way to expand on and refine my own description.

Opposing the Demolition of the Galaxy Restaurant

2011-01-07T10:13:00.000-08:00

If you haven't heard, the Galaxy, over at NE 9th and Burnside, is slated for destruction. The Portland Preservation blog has a good post about it, including a picture of the god-awful design plans for the new structure. There's still a possibility that the project can be stopped or modified, as it is still open for public comment. If you're interested, you should contact Christine Caruso, the city planner. Her email is Christine.Caruso@portlandoregon.gov, and you should reference case number LU 10-160377 DZ. Here's the email I sent to her this morning:

Hi Christine,

I'm submitting this email to you in order to register my opposition to the plans to demolish the Galaxy Restaurant at 9th and Burnside. I am interested in this issue because I live at SE 15th and Stark Street, and walk by this property everyday on my walk home from work; additionally, I spend a lot of leisure time in this area at nearby bars and shops. I'm opposed to the current plan because of the following issues:

The current structure has some historical context in that it is the first Denny's Restaurant in Portland, and that it is an example of the Googie architectural style. Admittedly, I personally don't believe this to be especially significant, but I do have the belief that this is a type of architecture that Portlanders will lament the destruction of in future decades, much the same way we regret today the destruction that occurred in the 1930s of our cast iron buildings.
The destruction of a one-story structure in order to replace it with another one-story structure is not in line with our city's values of re-use and sustainability. In the Oregonian article, "Portland's first Denny's building, a rare example of Googie architecture, could be demolished", architect James M. Park cites the out-dated plumbing and the need for additional square footage as two reasons why the building could not be salvaged, but this is a false argument; replacing plumbing does not require the removal of a structure, and square footage can be added to the existing structure without completely demolishing it. Destroying buildings has a real cost in the amount of energy and resources it costs, as well as the amount of waste it generates.
The idea that the site should be replaced by another one-story structure does not make sense when considering the future growth of the neighborhood. With the completion of the Burnside-Couch couplet, lower Burnside is poised to grow exponentially and become a much higher density mixed-use neighborhood - a 20 minute neighborhood. Should this structure be destroyed and re-developed, it doesn't make sense to replace it with a structure that doesn't seem to anticipate or take advantage of the neighborhood's future.
Finally, having reviewed the proposed architectural plans for "Trio Club", I believe that the aesthetic of this project is horrible. The proposed design and materials resemble something from the "big box" complexes of the suburbs. The project certainly does not follow the guidelines put forth in the 1991 Special Design Guidelines for the Central Eastside Plan, specifically ignoring the preference on Burnside for arcaded buildings. I would argue that no one would agree that the proposed design meets the goal of "enriching the pedestrian environment with quality materials and design features that are respective of the district's urban character."
Thank you for taking the time to read my email and considering my opinions,
Khris Soden

An Empassioned Plea for Yes on 26-118

2010-10-12T22:53:00.000-07:00

I'm not a native Oregonian; I moved to Portland in March of 2000. I didn't know the city very well back then - I only moved here because there were a lot of comics artists that I liked that lived here - but from the moment that this became my hometown, I wanted to learn about the city. I've always believed that knowing a city is like knowing a person: you need to know something about their history to really know them at all. Bearing that in mind, I set out to learning about Oregon and Portland. I consumed texts by O'Donnell and Thomas, Eugene Snyder, Karl Klooster, and Kimbark McColl. Eventually, I started making my own historic works about Portland: "City of Roses". I couldn't have produced my pieces without the work of those historians before me, but none of us could have done it without the Oregon Historical Society.

I don't know if you've been to the Oregon Historical Society in recent years. They have a showcase exhibit called "Oregon, My Oregon". Every time I visit it, it brings tears to my eyes. Real, honest tears (my wife can attest to this). It starts with the entry to the exhibit, where at face, you are confronted with the state seal as a four foot tall woodcut. The banner at the bottom of our seal reads "The Union". It is a stark reminder that our state's existence was one of the last gambles before the Civil War - we began as a compromise: if we were a whites only state (as we began; a shameful idea now), then maybe we could preserve the union of the North and the South. It was tried, it didn't work out well. I guess I'm a softy, because I always weep at those ideals. My emotions aren't helped by immediate proximity to Julius Meier's (of Meier & Frank) top hat, or Governor Tom McCall's (the state's last, great Republican - yes, they existed) cowboy boots.

If 26-118 fails, all of this is moth-balled, or worse yet, liquidated. Disposed of.

"My Oregon, Oregon" has more artifacts than what I've described. They have a model of the Columbia Rediviva, the ship that is the namesake of the Columbia River. Fair enough. But they also have actual artifacts from the Columbia Rediviva. A trunk that was on the ship that gave birth to our area. The same exhibit displays a bootie that was worn by John McLoughlin, "the father of Oregon", as a baby. Can you imagine that? You can see it. At least for now.

If this measure fails, we're going to lose all of that. The state's finances are busted. They took funding away from our history before we dived into our recession. It makes sense; how can you fund a historical society when you can't fund an educational system? So it falls to us in Multnomah county to be the stewards of our state's great and amazing history.

Will it cost us? Yes, it will. The burden in this measure is placed upon homeowners, which I will freely admit, I am not one. The price? The cost if you own a house valued at 240,000 dollars, will be one dollar a month. Can you afford that? I bet you can. One dollar a month. If the measure goes through, they are promising you free admission to the museum as a trade. Can you afford that extra one dollar a month on your taxes? I bet you can.

Vote for this measure. Make it happen. If you pass it, I'll make it worth your while. You own a house and you tell me that you voted for this? I'll research your house. If you own a house valued over 500 thousand and you promote this? I'll give you an illustration of your house. Please vote Yes on 26-118. Your neighbors are doing it.

Stanley McChrystal says the darndest things.

2010-07-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

After sketching Donald Sutherland for a bit, I flipped through the copy of Time I was reading and found this picture of General Stanley McChrystal, the guy who lost his job for thinking Bud Light Lime is the best beer ever or something, and thought it would be a fun profile to draw. McChrystal probably never said exactly that, but I think that "x rules, y drools!" is a really funny thing for someone to say; it was probably made up as a phrase sometime around 1983. I'm pretty sure that some Tea Party types will see this and not realize I'm making a joke and this will turn into some meme among right-wingers that have figured out how to use the series of tubes called the Internet.

Donald Sutherland with a Beard

2010-07-14T14:19:00.001-07:00

This is for all of you Donald Sutherland lovers, I guess. I was drawing him from an advertisement for some dumb-looking teevee movie or mini-series, and I only realized it was him after I'd been working on this for about 15 minutes. I've been trying to work on improving my ability to draw eyes, which is why I chose to work off of this photo. I'm giving myself a C+ on this one.

Joseph Gale

2010-07-12T22:30:00.000-07:00

Joseph Gale was an early American pioneer and fur trapper who was born in 1807 and died in 1881. If you want to learn more about him, you can read the Wikipedia article here. I'm guessing that this photo of him was taken in the late 1860s or early 1870s. Anyway, he's a minor character in a project I've been working on for several years, and today I decided I should probably draw some pictures of him.

A lot of the people in the 19th century that I find interesting were old when photography started to come into play, so you can never really tell what they looked like when they were younger, since all of the existent photos of them are when they are old. With that in mind, here's my regression of Joseph Gale:

A couple of things I've got to admit: 1) I drew these a few hours after seeing his photo and I did them without reference in front of me, so I'll probably have to go back and re-visit my drawings, and 2) yes, he's wearing a coon skin cap in place of his actual hair, I believe.

It's Techno Thursday!

2010-03-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

If you're a regular reader of the Portland Mercury, you're probably familiar with the newest comic in the back section: Techno Tuesday. This comic replaced Jesse Reklaw's weekly dream comic, Slow Wave, and that other one that felt like a bit of a knock-off of Perry Bible Fellowship (Thingpart). A lot of people, including myself, are not a fan of Techno Tuesday. I came up with this idea a week ago and made it today, thinking that I might send it in to the Mercury as a Letter to the Editor:

To be fair to Andy Rementer, the guy that makes this comic, I think he's a pretty good illustrator. I'm not a huge fan of his style, which is a bit of a mix between Robert Crumb and Ron Rege Jr., but he's definitely talented. I just think he's a bad gag writer. Oh, also: he doesn't really make his comics on the computer (I learned that today), but it was funnier to me to have it that way.

Micro-Democracy and a Publicly-Owned Twitter

2009-11-07T13:20:00.000-08:00

When I was getting my public education in Boise, Idaho, my very conservative 11th grade civics teacher had us write an essay on our single best idea on what we would do to improve the United States. After he'd finished grading the assignment, he read aloud some of them that he considered to have the most merit: banning abortion, strengthening the 2nd Amendment, re-instituting Prohibition, removing the separation of church and state. He then returned everyone's graded essays but mine. After class, I came up to his desk and asked what had happened to my essay. He looked me in the face and told me that I had never turned it in to him, and we both knew he was lying. I had written an essay arguing that the United States was too big to govern as one body and that it should be broken up into a half dozen smaller countries.

In the nearly twenty years since I wrote that essay I've become a civic-minded adult that understands our political system a lot better, but I still find myself occasionally thinking about that teenage idea. The heart of that idea was an assumption that a national representative couldn't be an effective avatar for their constituency, but I can't agree with that now: it would be hard to imagine Michele Bachmann and Earl Blumenauer as being interchangeable to their districts. Another argument was that it was too hard to communicate with the representative, that you couldn't make your voice heard, and that you had no idea of what it was that they were doing or working on. The local newspaper was pretty much the sole source of information about the activities of your representatives, and as such, a citizen was limited to the legislative activity that the newspaper chose to cover. Getting "in touch" with your representative meant telephoning their office, writing a letter, or sending a fax(!), and about the best that you could receive in return was a form letter that thanked you for your communication and vaguely touched on the issues you'd addressed. Somewhat strangely, as a teenager I only thought about all of this in relation to national and statewide politics rather than regional or local politics; I guess local policy wasn't as exciting to me back then.

When I wrote that essay, the Internet hadn't even received its first graphic browser (the World Wide Web had only been implemented a year before), and the idea of Web 2.0 was still almost a decade away. Our national representatives now have their own websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts (all of those links will take you to Representative Blumenauer's respective pages), and the number of people, companies, and organizations monitoring and reporting on the activities of those representatives are nearly endless. Constituents can use this same media to communicate with their elected officials or participate in online petitions, polls, and public lobbying groups.

Micro-Democracy, or A More Intimate and Accessible Government

I'm especially interested in how all of this applies on a local level, and the potential it offers for even greater citizen involvement and awareness in the government that serves them. For a lack of a better phrase, I've been referring to the idea of invoking the concepts and technology of Web 2.0 with the day-to-day workings of local government as "micro-democracy". This isn't a new idea, and is something that can already be seen in action. For example, Mayor Sam Adams uses both his Facebook and Twitter accounts to not only inform his constituents of actions he is involved in, but also to solicit ideas from the public. Surprisingly, his interactions are not simply one-sided: on Twitter, he actively re-posts relevant links by other users and engages directly with users. By being an active participant in social media, the Mayor effectively demonstrates that he is a part of the community, rather than an elected official above the community.

The end goal of micro-democracy (at least as I'm defining it, not how this guy's defining it) is to increase citizen access, awareness and involvement. Ideally, it shouldn't just be elected politicians that are involved in the process, but all extensions of government. The Portland Water Bureau has been one of the early adopters of this idea, having maintained their popular Water Blog for a few years (they've also got a Facebook page and a Twitter account). A few other local government agencies have Twitter accounts as well, such as the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability and the Portland Office of Emergency Management. Where are the other agencies that might benefit from a more casual broadcasting of information? I'm thinking of the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, the Office of Transportation, or Portland Public Schools, for starters.

Potential for a Better Public Process

For a specific example of how this idea of Micro-Democracy could have been utilized in an actual setting, I'll use the Washington High Community Center project that Portland Parks and Recreation is working on. Portland Parks and Rec does have a Facebook page, but they don't appear to have used it for anything in the past year. (They may also have a Twitter account? I can't really tell). As the planning for Washington High got underway early this past summer, Parks and Rec mailed out 6,000 postcard mailers to residences, sent email invitations to neighborhood and business associations, and distributed 50 posters. Living within the 3-mile service area, I received a postcard, but it was the presence of a poster stapled to a telephone pole near my apartment that served to remind me of the public process, and specifically, the survey.

For the survey, Parks and Rec issued 940 physical surveys (600 of those went to parent-teacher associations), a targeted mailer was mailed to 1,739 Buckman residences, 2,165 door-to-door surveys were attempted, and 3500 inserts were sent out in the Sunnyside neighborhood associations newsletter. Of the physical surveys, 600 were returned, with 400 of those coming from the PTA surveys. The mailers, inserts, and door-to-door surveys yielded another 635 surveys, with only 37 of those coming from online responses (I was one of those 37 people). [Outreach Activity Summary, 6/09]. If the online survey was promoted via Facebook and Twitter, how much more online participation would we have seen? One of the powerful tools of Facebook and Twitter is that users can share posts and links with people in their own network. I would be much more likely to "re-tweet" a link to a Parks & Rec survey than I would to share the postcard I received with my friends and neighbors.

Looking at the demographics of those that responded to the survey, almost half of them reported having children, which makes sense given the number of surveys that were received from the PTAs. However, this is a disproportionate number of families with children; the percentage of households with children are as follows: Buckman, 4.8%; Kerns, 5.5%; Hosford-Abernethy, 12%; Brooklyn, 11.2%; Creston-Kenilworth, 13.3%; and Reed, 8.1%. Another area where the survey respondents were in a disproportionate percentage was in home-ownership. 67% of the respondents to the survey owned their homes, while home-ownership for the same neighborhoods is much lower; these are the percentages of home-owners in the respective neighborhoods: Buckman, 16%; Kerns, 19%; Sunnyside, 35%; Hosford-Abernethy, 51%; Brooklyn, 37%; Creston-Kenilworth, 38%, Reed, 36%. [All figures come from census information available of portlandmaps.com]

Of the roughly 117 people that filled out comment cards at the open house in late August, 44% had children in the household and 78% were homeowners. Would there have been a larger gathering of citizens if they were invited to the "event" on Facebook, or if Portland Parks and Rec had posted a reminder on Twitter? It makes sense that families with children and people that own their own homes responded in larger numbers, since they probably have a bigger stake in the community center built in the neighborhood (especially if they both have children and own a home in the neighborhood), but an opportunity was lost in not using available technology to generate a greater involvement of all members of the community.

A Publicly-Owned Twitter Doesn't Really Mean a Publicly-Owned Twitter

Twitter is a great resource for any organization that may want to disperse regular updates to a large group of users, but there is the problem of a perception by a certain segment of the public that is only used for trivial navel-gazing. I prefer to think of Twitter as an information resource, or as David Eaves points out, a newspaper (thank you for the suggestion, Molly Vogt!). This perception of Twitter as frivolous is probably a problem in encouraging greater government usage of the service. Another problem that concerns me more is that Twitter is a private enterprise.

Twitter is a platform of communication, like email, instant messages, or text messages, but it is also a brand name. Facebook, of course, is the same way. Both companies provide their APIs, though, so it is possible for third-party applications to post updates directly to Twitter and Facebook. This is where I've been thinking of a "publicly-owned Twitter": a platform that functions the same way as Twitter, that can automatically update Twitter and Facebook statuses, but is not Twitter. The utility in a publicly-operated version of Twitter is that it removes the government from the reliance on the company, and disassociates it from the brand.

For the sake of example, let's imagine that the city of Portland creates the PortlandUpdates.com website for this purpose. The city can market PortlandUpdates as a place where you can sign up to get mobile updates from all of Portland's departments, schools, and elected leaders online. Users elect only to follow the areas of government that they are interested in: maybe you don't care about updates from the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, but you want to see the Department of Transportation's posts, and you want to get SMS updates from Sunnyside Elementary. That's fine, there you are. You want to follow all of City Hall, except for Randy Leonard, because you don't like Randy Leonard? Okay, no problem. There's probably even a free PortlandUpdates app that you can download for your iPhone or your Android. Cool.

The utility in having something like this is that it provides the opportunity to connect with someone who "hates Twitter", while still including them in the discussion. The end user of PortlandUpdates.com doesn't need to know that when Mayor Adams or the Water Bureau posts to PortlandUpdates that it is also posting to their respective Twitter or Facebook accounts. It's an approach that my parents would be more comfortable with.

Anyway. That's what I've got. An essay about bringing government closer together instead of splitting it apart. And Mr. Binder, if you're reading this, can I please have that essay back? It was pretty funny.

A Visual Idea of Crowd-Sourcing Portland Records

2009-10-05T20:44:00.001-07:00

In reference to my post the other day about my desire to crowd-source transcribing Portland directories, I decided to make a quick diagram of what I'm trying to do. Maybe this will be more compelling, so please take a look (click on the image for a larger view):

Part of this is a re-cap on thoughts and concerns, another part is thinking out loud:

The first step is capturing individual pages of the City Directories. A big problem is that these things are too big to easily copy; the interior parts of the pages are far enough away from the scan bar that they copy black (I tried to imply that with the page illustration). A specific idea is finding existent copies of directories outside of the library collection, purchasing them, then cutting the spines in order to facilitate scanning. This seems extremely expensive (and I hate the idea of cutting spines in general). Another option would be high-resolution photos of the pages, although I don't know enough about photography to gauge the expense or difficulty of this.
Pages have a varying amount of entries on them, and a human eye (at least currently) is required to correctly parse out the different entries. Cutting and pasting each record is an easy option, but I haven't yet looked for any software that will automatically save and number pasted JPGs. I have little concern about facilitating this process, as I'm sure that someone has created software that will allow quick pasting to sequential files.. If I'm wrong on this, this may be a more difficult step.
The actual interface for recording individual records is something that I am currently trying to learn, and it's been very difficult for me. The components that I'm focusing on are: individual users and records, and how to record both. My plan is to figure out how to do this using MySQL and PHP, although I have extremely little experience with both. The goal of this process follows this pattern:

The user logs in and starts transcribing data. I want a user log in so we can track how many records the specific user is logging. I want to provide reward to top-ranking users. The secondary reason for this is that each record will need to go through at least two users - the data will be compared, and if each matches, it goes into the database. If a record is recorded differently by two people, then it gets sent back to this process. It's a quality control process.
After data is coded twice in the same way, it gets entered into the final database. This database is meant to record accurate historical information that can be later data-mined.

This is what I want to do. I'm aiming to digitize all of Portland's directories. Do you have advice? Better ways of doing the same thing? Do you have the time and expertise to help? Is anyone interested in this?

The Hope of Crowd-Sourcing Historical Data Entry

2009-10-03T17:58:00.000-07:00

I spent almost 4 hours at Portland's Central Library today doing data-entry work. My ultimate goal was uncertain, but I was armed with an Excel spreadsheet, the 1893 City of Portland Directory, and the 1900 City of Portland Directory. I started from the beginning of each of the directories, entering all information for persons and businesses listed. I got as far as "Acre" in my endeavors before I called it a day. I've done this sort of thing about two dozen times in the past year.

Like I said, my ultimate goal is unknown (although I've got some vague future plans), but the immediate goal is to digitize these directories. After leaving the Library, I walked back towards my neighborhood, silently reflecting on the amount I accomplished and doing calculations. On average, I complete one entry in one minute. Based on this statistic, it would take 42 weeks of full-time data-entry to go through just the 1893 directory. I don't have that kind of time. I don't have the kind of money to pay other people for that kind of time. In the grand scheme of things, my 4 hours of work has amounted to nothing.

In the past, I've toyed around with photocopying the directories, scanning them, OCRing them, then coding the data. This hasn't worked out very well. First (and this is a big problem for any solution), the books are extremely thick and fragile, making it very hard to clearly photocopy a page. Even though I've spent a decade of my life making photocopies for a living, I still have trouble getting a clear photocopy of most of these pages. Secondly, OCR technology as it currently exists is extremely fallible and OCRing century-old print is less than ideal. Third, coding the OCR'd data is not automatic and is time-consuming in itself. I haven't walked around figuring out the statistics for the time this might take me, but I'm pretty sure that it's still more time than I have.

My solution? Obtain the best copies I can of these directories, scan them, separate them by entry, and then set up a process where other humans help me do the data entry. If I could divide the 42 weeks of labor between 1000 willing people, we might all get somewhere. Have you seen the United States Geologic Survey of the North American Bird Phenology Program? That's what I have in mind.

This is something that I think is worth spending time working towards, even if I can see some big problems with this. The first is the noted problem of getting a clean copy of the documents. Another is breaking the scanned pages into individual entries - that will take some labor. The next big problem is setting up the system; I currently have no idea how to program something like this. Assuming that I can overcome those hurdles, the next difficulty is finding people who are interested in participating in this project.

Even with these problems, I see a potential in this and I'm going to work towards it. Even if my own goals are vague, I'm a huge believer in the utility of converting historical analog information to digital media. My exact goals might be a little hazy right now, but I'm convinced that this information will be hugely useful to future researchers. What do you think?

His Father Must Be Proud

2009-05-06T00:43:00.000-07:00

I saw this guy walking down SW 3rd outside of the Portland Outdoor Store last week. If you can believe it, this illustration only captures about a tenth of his smugness and conceitedness. It was really awful. Please make sure to click on the image for the full effect.

Things I Saw Today

2009-04-14T23:48:00.001-07:00

This happened at Powell's Books:

(I wish I'd gotten a better look at the guy.)

And then I saw this at the Basement Pub:

I didn't see this last one, but I wish I had:

April 12th Sketches

2009-04-13T01:43:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter everyone! (I know it's over, but I did them on Easter, so there.)

And here's the non-Easter themed one:

Here's John Barth on Wikipedia for the punchline. I wanted to do Richard Yates as the gag, but I couldn't remember his name at the time.

I'm Trying To Wrap My Head Around The iPhone

2009-04-04T19:32:00.000-07:00

My mom used to tell me the story of how she went to Disneyland and they had a display of phones set-up and that you could use push buttons to call someone instead of using an old rotary handset. Her brother and her spent a good deal of time dialing the numbers for the next booth over so they could talk to each other on these amazing new devices. (This was probably between 1962 and 1964 when World's Fairs were happening in Seattle and then New York.) She was amazed by the potential and the functionality of the things, and to her it felt like a fundamental shift in technology, enough so that she would remember to tell me that story several times in the late 80s, when touch-tone phones were the norm. In late summer of 2007, I had my first experience of seeing the iPhone in use, and I immediately thought of that experience that my mom had: "Now we're living in the future!" I was completely mesmerized by it, in exactly the same way my mom was mesmerized by touch-tone phones.

I visited my parents a few months ago, and showed my mom a YouTube video of the iPhone after trying to explain to her the utility of Twitter. She didn't get Twitter, and only kind of got the iPhone video, but she was impressed and without understanding. I'm sure that I'll be the same way when I'm sixty and something completely "game-changing" comes along.

I have an iPhone now. I wouldn't have had it if my company didn't change carriers, but they did, and they issued a policy permitting personal use. If anyone is interested in contacting me in an old-school fashion, my number is 503.442.9703. I'm still getting used to the damned thing, probably like my mom did when she finally made the transition from old dial phones to touch-tone phones. "Dialing Opearator is different!"

Does anyone remember the old days of the early 90s when the new technology was spelling out things on your touch-tone phones? There used to be a section of the phonebook (remember those? Of course you do, because they still give you them, like it or not) where it was: "Are you thinking of killing yourself? "Dial 555-5555, then enter the code 7486". What an awkward time period we all live in.

A plea to Google Earth for full 4th Dimension ability

2009-03-23T19:59:00.000-07:00

At some point within the past few months, Google Earth has added the option of "historical imagery". Its great: you can overlay historic maps on the area that you're looking at, adding the ability to compare the now versus then. It's fun to play with for a while and worth trying out, but it doesn't approach the scale that I'd been hoping for.

To any of my friends that would listen, I've been advocating for the past couple of years the idea of a fourth-dimension element to Google Earth. The idea hasn't been implemented with this latest update, but it can't be far from being realized: ideally a user can tag a location with a time frame, and subsequent users can see that tag when accessing a range that includes that time frame. For example, I can currently tag the location of the Portland Hotel, but if I tag it, it shows Pioneer Courthouse Square. There's already a ton of tags on Pioneer Courthouse Square, and it's difficult to parse through them. Ideally, I'd tag that site with the dates of its existence (1890 - 1951), and if someone used a slider bar between those dates, only then would my Portland Hotel tag would pop up.

I've got a ton of data that I would love to tag using Google Earth, but I hesitate to contribute, because I feel like I'm making noise. The program as it is exists is an amazing way to view a site unseen by you, but who needs all the extraneous data on the history? I'm only thinking of Portland here, as it's my focus, but what about more historically important sites? I'm thinking of places like Trafalgar Square in London, Tiananmen Square in Beijing, or Union Square in New York. Many things have happened at these points over the ages, but they might not be immediately important to the casual virtual tourist. Perhaps it's important to someone to know what was on exhibit on the Fourth Plinth in 2000 to a few people, but probably not to the casual internet tourist.

On the other hand, site-and-time specific data could be a huge boon to historical researchers. For example, I have a specific Google Maps set dedicated to Portlands buildings in 1908. Maybe someone else out there is interested in the city of Portland during 1908? What a boon it would be to the both of us to be able to set our slider bars to "1908", and only see, tag, and markup that year. Granted, this is is only useful to those interested in the past, but what if this was implemented globally? It would provide us with another tool of understanding the past that has brought us to the present.

With our technology becoming increasingly friendly to geotagging, this idea may be even more important. It might not matter now how many first kisses happened in Pioneer Courthouse Square and how they're tagged, but in a couple of years, there might be a critical mass. Tiananmen Square might be the site of hundreds of thousands of geotagged Facebook updates. It's all noise and unwanted distraction now, but by 2049 it might be the answer to how we lived our lives, one location at a time.

Al Gore

2009-02-04T23:33:00.001-08:00

You can't roll back time, but shit, what would the world look like now if we'd had President Gore in office in 2001?

I don't want to think about it too much, because I'd probably start crying and call in sick to work tomorrow.

The Idea of the Semantic Web

2009-02-04T23:01:00.000-08:00

I first read about the idea of the Semantic Web today, and it totally struck a nerve in me. I've got to admit that I'm not sure that I totally understand what Berners-Lee is going for, but I really like one idea that came up while I was reading about it, and that is the standardization of cross-platform (cross-discipline?) data.

From the perspective of an amateur historian like myself, I know that there's tons and tons (or, more appropriately, gigs and gigs) of data out there about Portland and the people that have lived in Portland, but there is no easy way of searching or aggregating that data. For example, there are genealogists that are contributing great information about people from Portland's past, but they have no regard for historians of the city (like me). I'm doing research about the city and people that have lived here, but my research is not likely to cross paths with the genealogists. We're referred to as two different "silos" of data accumulation. How awesome would it be if those two "silos" were to be somehow integrated? My posted research could benefit the genealogists, and their research could benefit mine. It'd allow people to do research without being redundant in regards to previous research.

Admittedly, I haven't read much on the idea of the technology, and wouldn't even understand how this might be implemented, but the idea is really exciting to me. I think that the idea of standardizing data across all possible spectrums of collectible data is nigh impossible, but I've got to admit that it's one of the fantasies I imagine in my head while I'm drifting off to sleep.

Gaza Strip vs. Portland

2008-12-29T16:07:00.000-08:00

I've got a lot of thoughts and opinions on the ever-going Israel-Palestine situation/conflict/problem, but I prefer not to comment publicly on it; there's a lot of people out there with a lot more knowledge of the situation who are a lot more invested/involved/immersed in it than I will ever be. Why should some Joe with no stake in it start professing like he knows something or has a solution? Then again, I guess that's what the Internet's for, but I digress.

Anyway, with the conflict in the news for the past few days, I decided to open Google Earth and go visit the Gaza Strip. It's tiny. I figured it was pretty small, but I had no idea. Sometimes it's good to put far reaches of the world in local perspective, because it provides us with a scale that we can use when we are reading or learning about stories from a particular part of the world. On that note, here's some comparisons:

The city of Portland covers 145 square miles, with 134 of them being on land as opposed to water. The entirety of the Gaza Strip is 139 square miles. Portland's population is about 576,000. The Gaza Strip has a population of 1.48 million people.

Thanks, Wikipedia.

RSS Feed = Sloth?

2008-12-23T18:58:00.000-08:00

Man, the Internet is my favorite tool next to a good drawing pen or a good writing pen. It's actually - for better or worse - become my main tool these days. I use it extensively for fact-checking and drive-by research. Ostensibly, I would actually be using the vast powers of the web for further contributing to this digital Library of Alexandria, but really, I'm a lot more of a passive than active user of the Internet. (If any proof of this is needed, just go to my website and check out the last time I updated it.)

As this passive user that would like to be a more active participant, I am always interested in new internet-based technologies and ideas. I love the ideas of wikis, blogs, cameras that upload direct to your flickr account, all of that shit. The thing is, I am definitely not an early adopter. Case in point: it was only last week that I learned how to use RSS feeds.

RSS feeds are magic - it's like it pulls all of the parts of the Internet that you are interested in to one, easily accessible place. No longer do I have to remember a series of URLs that I like to visit daily! No longer do I have to think about using "bookmarks". (I kind of shun bookmarks because when I use them, I overuse them, then never organize them. There is no need to bookmark every French and Dutch learning website on the English speaking Internet.) I use Google's Reader to pull all of my feeds.

The first day I used Reader was magic - I was reading about all sorts of fascinating arts news (something that I never seek out on a daily basis), posting links to different things on facebook. It was great. I had about twenty feeds. By the end of the day, I subscribed to thirty more. The next morning, I found that I had over 500 articles to catch up on. Note that I write "to catch up on": rather than finding a wealth of magic in my feed, I found a bunch of stuff that I immediately felt that I needed to battle my way through. There were twenty-five posts about opera, which I am about as interested in as I am in football or cars. "Mark as read", "mark as read", "mark as read". After a few hours, I'd gotten it down to a manageable two hundred articles. I probably really read about twenty. And that was one day.

The next day was a Saturday and (as my ever-patient girlfriend, Heather, can attest), I spent most of the day reading things that interested me, but mostly, clicking through things that I wasn't interested in reading. Here are some things that you might not know: a lot of webcomics are written by guys that read a lot of manga and play World of Warcraft and make comics about guys (or anthropomorphized cats) that read a lot of manga and play World of Warcraft; 95% of the content of I Can Haz Cheezburger is not funny; the New York Times has its regular articles, and then its "In Brief" articles, which are re-caps of the regular articles. Saturday was a lesson in reading judiciously; I went through my Sunday feed in about an hour.

Even factoring in the outright crap (that I shouldn't have subscribed myself to in the first place) and the articles that I'm not particularly interested in reading, there's still a lot of good stuff to find on my feeds. Enough that I spend a significant amount of time going through them, and therein lies the beauty and the horror of the feed: there's alot of interesting stuff out there. I mean, I've read about a guy that had amnesia for most of his life, and another guy that figured out how to build the atomic bomb they dropped on Hiroshima. That's cool stuff (to me) that I would have never bothered reading if I hadn't subscribed to all of these sites. At the same time, though, I have this continuous urge to always KEEP READING, to stay up-to-the-minute on my feeds. I think to myself,"Hey, this is an interesting article! I should post in on facebook, or on my blog!" Then I immediately think,"No I shouldn't! If I do that, I won't have time to read the next five articles!" Even given that, should I just be re-posting things that I find? The Internet's a vast echo chamber, and disseminating content that doesn't come directly from me feels a little wrong and unnecessary to me.

And that's the thing: I want to contribute to the Internet, not be consumed by it. Re-posting an interesting article on facebook is one thing, but re-posting it on my blog without adding additional content doesn't further anything. I simply become a step in the process of redistributing advertising, entertainment, propaganda. I think I might have to seriously cull my RSS feeds because I need to reclaim the time to casually read things, digest them, then contribute in my own way.

At the same time, I haven't even signed up for Oregonlive or Cafe Unknown yet... I better go check up on my feed now.

Walking Report, December 10th, 2008

2008-12-10T21:00:00.000-08:00

I started out at the Central Library, where I've been doing research after work on Tuesdays and Wednesdays (those are the nights that they're open until 8pm). This doesn't actually pertain to the walking report, but has anyone else noticed the Homeless Hackerz that hang out at the Library? These guys have laptops, and grab books on coding, but then they also have big frame backpacks with - what I presume - is all of their worldly belongings. These guys are in the Library pretty much every time I go there. It's a little community; when I'm being gracious I like to assume that they're a roving band of heroes, traveling from town to town like modern day minstrels, improving the Internet and fighting for freedoms. Maybe they are exchange students or travelers.

Anyway, on my way out of the Library, I realized that I'd like to buy a wire-bound notebook so I could take down some notes in a non-digital fashion. The Library store was still open, so I stopped in there, but the cheapest thing that they had was Moleskin. I wanted something standard issue for a high school student, something that might cost two or three bucks and provided a larger writing surface. I decided to walk down to the Rite Aid on Alder at Sixth and pick one up.

At the entrance to Rite Aid was the ubiquitous hippie gutter punk. These guys drive me out of my mind; they're capable people who make a bad name for the emotionally/socially/psychologically-challenged actual homeless people that hang out down town. The guy hanging out at the entrance was a new guy, who looked way too tidy to be sitting on the sidewalk. Maybe he was doing something for a Sociology class at Reed? Nah, Reed kids usually don't end up making it all the way downtown. I digress, because otherwise I'll start ranting about obnoxious not-really-homeless street kids like S. Renee Mitchell. I really have no room to talk.

Anyway, Rite Aid had no notebooks. Seriously, there was not an 8.5" x 11" wire bound college rule to be found. Don't school/college kids use these anymore? I'm getting old, I don't know anymore. They had wire steno notebooks, but since I don't know how to write shorthand, I declined. I left without buying anything, which always makes me think that the loss prevention crew expects that I am shoplifting. I wasn't.

I left there racking my brain, thinking of where else I might be able to purchase a notebook. The smoke shop on 4th Ave was out of the question. I didn't consider Peterson's. I kept thinking. Why doesn't Stumptown sell notebooks and sketchbooks? Wouldn't that make sense to do? Maybe they could even sell pens? That's a free idea for the proprietors of Stumptown. Maybe they already sell these things, I didn't check. I ended up buying a (non-wired) steno pad at the Plaid Pantry on MLK and Burnside. I think that the clerk is/was a meth addict judging from the sores.

There were a lot of corporate douchebags out tonight. Excuse me, corporate goons - I'm thinking that "douchebag" is becoming a little over-used. These are the kind of guys that travel all abreast on the sidewalk, oblivious to others (unless they're a foxy lady) and laughing loud with mildly absent and mean-spirited grins on their faces. Probably talking about golf.

The drug dealers on the east side of 4th between Washington and Stark were all on the west side. I took the east side. No one offered me anything. The former site of Veganopolis has still not yet been rented out, and still suggests people to try the vegan meals at the Ethiopian place next door.

The street kids with the tired and lame "Fishing for Change" improvised fishing pole and change cup weren't out tonight in front of Voodoo Donuts. I've taken to wearing my mp3 player while I walk lately (after a four month hiatus), so I didn't hear anyone if they spare-changed me. I'm pretty sure I saw spurts of blood on the sidewalk at Third and Burnside. No one was sleeping on the southwest side of the Burnside Bridge. I saw a guy taking pictures of either downtown or the "Made In Oregon" sign at the mid-point of the bridge, which has become an increasingly common sight when crossing the bridge. Are a bunch of photography projects due, or does someone want to add "Portland, Oregon, at night" to their flickr account? I have no idea.