Opposing the Demolition of the Galaxy Restaurant

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

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.

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

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

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!

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

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.