Lyza Danger Gardner

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PDX: New Deschutes Brewery in the Pearl, via Autumn

June 4th, 2008

My friend Autumn tried out the new Deschutes Brewery in the Pearl and wrote about it on her blog. I find it funny.

not totally thrilled my reuben was going to cost me $11.95 i was downright flummoxed to see that the kids menu listed grilled salmon as one of its offerings. grilled salmon? seriously? if it cannot be formed into a patty or tot, my child is not interested

Go read more…

I have to admit that I’m not optimistic about the place. I get dragged to the one in Bend more often than seems logical and my mouth always leaves bored and overcharged.

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4 Responses to “PDX: New Deschutes Brewery in the Pearl, via Autumn”

  1. El Gray Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    I was a surprisingly enthusiastic fan of broiled filet of flounder as a young’un, but yeah, that’s an odd choice.

  2. Aaron B. Hockley Says:
    June 5th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

    This is awesome. Folks must bookmark this. The next time some Pearl District resident ponders why their area of town has a stigma, point out the grilled salmon kid’s menu. Seriously… wow.

  3. Julian Says:
    June 8th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    I describe the decor at the new Deshutes Brewery as “Woodsy wins the lottery”. I have many other opinions about the place but one is consistent with all other local breweries - fining people, fining. Beer should not look like used bath water, all murky and opaque. There’s already a winery called Duck Pond, don’t make beer that way too.

  4. brett Says:
    June 10th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    I think Deschutes did a great job of making a casual brewpub. The food is edible, if not overpriced, and the beer is sublime. You could certainly do much worse (Rouge? Bridgeport?). That said, salmon surprise on a kid’s menu? That’s just fucked up.

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PDX: Growing up Oregonian

June 3rd, 2008

Oregonian Buiding Postcard, 1940sNo, I don’t mean native, I mean hanging around the offices of the well-established newspaper here. My mom has worked for The Oregonian longer than I’ve been alive. Long enough to have been around in the days of the Journal, Portland’s then-afternoon paper (our late family friend, Donald Sterling, was at the helm of the Journal at the time it got sucked into the Oregonian-sphere in 1982).

When I was very young, my father also produced the news at KOIN (our CBS affiliate). So you could say it was a journalistic family.

As a child, I spent a considerable amount of time in the Oregonian building in downtown Portland. I can only hope my sister and I were tolerably well-behaved. Probably not, regrettably.

Here are some things I remember:

  • The pneumatic tubes! Oh, the pneumatic tubes! Papers scrolled, pushed into cylinders, then FWOOMP!! The hollow FWOOMPing sound! The tubes went past the wall opposite the elevators on at least some floors; I would stand there and hope something would go sucking by. There are few things more fascinating to a child than pneumatic tubes.
  • There is a tunnel! through the center of the building. For driving through. And parking and whatnot. you can see a green truck turning left into it in the postcard photo. Additional trivia: that truck is going the “wrong way”–traffic has always in my memory gone northbound through the building only.
  • I had a vision come to me late last night in the miserable throes of insomnia (it inspired this post). I have the vaguest of memories, like an unsubstantiated dream, suddenly in my head unbidden, of a coffeeshop or casual restaurant in the northwest corner of the building (Broadway & Columbia). I see it in hues of late-70s browns and golds, dimness, perhaps the smell of coffee and cigarette smoke? Did such an establishment exist? I’m fairly certain it did. There was an external entrance and one into the Oregonian’s lobby in my memory/dream.
  • I had several favorite areas in the building: where the artists worked (at the time, the 5th floor), hispid forests of graphic pens and nests of color separations; the newsroom, because stuff goes on there; the backshop and underbelly areas, because they were mysterious.
  • The early 80s in the editorial department: picture this. Almost entirely male, everyone with cubby office (steelcase desk, piles of yellowing newsprint, metal Venetian blinds, a fifth in the bottom drawer, linoleum). And they smoked cigars. Like for real, at their desks. This world came to represent what might be most accurately termed “old school” in my frame of reference.
  • The teletype machines ka-bangKa-bangKa-bang.
  • The place was run by some sort of Hal 9000 type mainframe. Reporters each had a terminal, generally referred to as a “scope.” When the shit was really going down, the terminals would beep. This was regarded as a Very Big Deal. I believe they beeped when Reagan got shot. I’m not sure what else qualified for a beep.

I’m hoping my mom will sail in and straighten me out on a few of my wispy memories here.

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3 Responses to “PDX: Growing up Oregonian”

  1. thisKat Says:
    June 3rd, 2008 at 10:15 pm

    So funny to know someone has the same childhood memories I have! The pneumatic tubes were definitely the best. And I do remember the smoking. For a long time, until smoking was banned in the newsroom, my mom had one of those air-sucking machines next to her ashtray. I loved the electric typewriters and the corrective tape. I used *a lot* of corrective tape. And the bound carbon copies! White, pink and yellow. The newsroom was noisier then, like newsrooms are in the movies, with old phones ringing real bells. (How did they get anything *done*?) The last time I was there it felt like a library, with the gently buzzing phones, the carpeted floor and the soft cubes.

    There were many times we were there late into the night and my brother and I would race around the newsroom, pushing each other on rolling chairs, hopped up on sugar from the candy machine, and probably tea from beverage machine. (Did my mom really give us caffeine?)

    But my favorite memories are of the people, some now long gone: Uncle Early (Dean), Fran Jones and her houseboat, Kent Clark (his real name), Rod Patterson and perm and his Hawaiian shirts. There are more and I can see their faces or hear their smokey laughs but I can’t remember their names. I always felt special and important and smart when these people ooohed and aaaahed at my “stories.”

    When I read Katharine Graham’s biography and she described scenes in the newsroom at the Washington Post, I always pictured it as the Oregonian newsroom, circa 1979.

  2. Maggie Says:
    June 5th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    Yes, there was def. a coffee shop of some sort down there - very brown, very diner-esque. But I fear, my sister, that we were not saints. I remember many hours of a game that involved running all over the newsroom but not letting anyone see us, which in the process I am sure caused massive disruption. Also, I thought the tunnel was built originally because they also printed the paper there (in the part of the building with the big non-transparent windows along 6th Ave). I think that’s cool. I also think the newsroom, as it exists now, is no newsroom. Where’s the noise, and the frenzy, and the wry wisecracking old guys? Computers (and the Internet - consider Desk Set, one of Mom’s favorite movies) just took all the fun out of it…

  3. Fran Says:
    June 16th, 2008 at 11:53 am

    About the cafe in the corner of The Oregonian building. It was called the Press Box and may have had a different name when it changed hands in the late 70s. There was an entrance to it from the newspaper’s lobby (the lobby itself at that time was two floor high, with a window overlooking it from the second floor, over the elevators).

    The decor was indeed dreadful brown and gold carpet and fake wood-paneling. I never ate there under the old owners; the new ones were renowned for roasting a couple of turkeys every day and serving really good sandwiches, hot or cold.

    This all came to an end when there was a chimney fire and the restaurant was closed. The owners reopened in the building across Sixth, then called Equitable Plaza and now Unitus Plaza. They left THAT location after The Oregonian ran an “investigative” piece about how people abuse handicap parking tags and fingered the owners, who were using one that had been issued to the (then dead) mother of one of them. Oh, well, there went a really good lunch option.

    When I started at the paper in 1976, there was also a lunch counter across Broadway, called the Broadway. It had a counter with red-vinyl chrome stools and served specials like baked heart or meatloaf. There was a bar on the north side of the space that had a large painting of a reclining nude over it. And the back bar, which is now the bar at Higgins, was a topless bar (the entertainers, not the drinkers, were topless). The space was renovated into a spot called Atwater’s, not very interesting, then became Higgins. I don’t miss the baked heart.

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Local History Quickie: Oregon City’s Municipal Elevator

May 20th, 2008

Oregon City\'s Municipal ElevatorOregon City, Ore., operates a public elevator that is technically a vertical street! From the Oregon City Municipal Elevator Public Art Project Blog (whew, that’s a mouthful):

The Oregon City Municipal Elevator continues to operate as one of only four municipal elevators in the world and “Elevator Street” remains the only “vertical street” in North America.

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One Response to “Local History Quickie: Oregon City’s Municipal Elevator”

  1. Josh Says:
    May 20th, 2008 at 5:23 pm

    I used to live nearby there. Cool that other people are discovering the cool history over there as well!

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PDX History: Chew on This–Our Foreign Origins

May 19th, 2008

Did you know that when Pettygrove et. al first planted their roots in “The Clearing” on the west bank of the Willamette River (later known as Portland, Ore.) that Portland wasn’t even technically in the United States? If politics in the following few years had veered differently, we could be living under the British flag.

Put another way: “Father of Oregon” John McLoughlin was born in Canada, and was a British citizen, working for the Hudson’s Bay Company. So our state’s father was not born American (though he did later switch his citizenship in the 1850’s, once settled down in Oregon City).

It wasn’t until 1846, a few years into Portland’s existence, that the American flag was run up the flagpole at Fort Vancouver (Washington) and the British were formally sent packing.

Also an interesting tidbit: one of the reasons for Vancouver’s failing to become the region’s primary metropolis* is that there was speculation that the Brits might get to keep the land north of the Columbia River (today’s Washington state). Foreseeing the 640 acres of free land the US was expected to give each settler, pioneers instead chose to stay south of the river, where things were more likely to end up in American hands**.

* There are others. But this is an interesting one.
** The bill to give the 640 acres to homesteaders, as well as increase the volubility of the American claim to Oregon Territory, was introduced by a Missouri senator named Lewis Linn. This was a popular move. Hence West Linn, Linnton and Linn County, Oregon.

Eugene Snyder’s book “Portland’s Early Days: Stump Town Triumphant” and the staff at the McLoughlin House in Oregon City provided sources for this entry.

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PDX: The Weather Ball

May 16th, 2008

An apt topic, giving today’s sudden swelter: The Weather Ball in downtown Portland.

Once I was driving with Mr. Pencil, on the off-ramp from I-5 south, city center exit, and said “Oh, the weather ball says it’s going to rain.”

And Mr. Pencil: “The weather what?”

“Surely you know about the weather ball.”

Just a moment ago, I stuck my head out of the office window, and pulled it back in, then closed the window because it is wavery hot out there. It gleams, and hot wind blows in.

“Drat!” I said to Aileen, across the room at her desk. “You can’t see the weather ball from here.”

“The weather ball?! What’s the weather ball?”

And so it goes. I guess it’s not as common knowledge as I would have assumed.

The weather ball is, well, a ball of sorts (if by “ball” you mean “cube”–it has squared edges) on a pole on a building in downtown Portland. It’s covered in lights. It’s on a squat, dull building–I’m not sure which one. It might be the Unitas building. It might not. It’s near the Standard Insurance Building.

It can tell you one of six things, that is:

  1. It’s going to get hotter (steady red)
  2. It’s going to get colder (steady white)
  3. It’s going to stay about the same (steady green)
  4. (and 5 and 6) It’s going to precipitate (blinking)

Yesterday I imagine it was steady red. I don’t know what it says today because I cannot, as I said, see it. Well, I can see it, by running down the hall to the west end of the building and using the unfinished unit’s view, but it’s so bright I can’t make it out. I think it’s red.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who knows about this. It’s been around a whole lot of long time. I loved it as a child.

According to Wikipedia, it’s one of a whole lot of similar weather beacons in the world.

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9 Responses to “PDX: The Weather Ball”

  1. Josh Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 3:58 pm

    Wow that’s crazy! I had no idea this existed.

  2. Don Park Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    i know what the weather ball is but i never knew how to read it. thanks for the info!

  3. autumn Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    must admit complete ignorance of the weather ball. -1 portlandia cred team rouse. :(

  4. tODD Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 4:10 pm

    Yeah, I’m with Don on this one. I saw it a lot in my time downtown, but thought then it was an ugly decoration on an ugly building.

    How is it not always more convenient for you to look at your computer for weather information? Forecastfox is telling me that not only is it sunny, but several people have died from melting (or that’s what I assume the exclamation point in the red octagon means).

  5. sharon Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

    Heya, cool! I knew that’s what it was called, but I never knew how to understand it; thanks for the key.

    Also, isn’t there a weathervane/barometer that’s functional yet oddly artistic in Pioneer Courthouse Square? Hrm…

  6. Alan I. Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 10:44 pm

    In downtown Sacramento, there is the equivalent. The News 10 Weather Tower has the same key for telling passer-by’s the weather conditions. See for yourself at http://www.news10.net/weather/tower-key-lights.aspx.

  7. Fran Says:
    May 17th, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    Weather ball: Childhood memory. Minneapolis, 1956. (It was installed on a tall bank building in 1949). A brother patiently explaining the code, which is ridiculously simple. So simple that I thought it was nuts that the compositors in The Oregonian’s back shop (back when there was a back shop, before pages were computer generated) kept a note on the bulletin board explaining it. Then they build the PacWest tower on the site of what had been a one-story bank building, and now you can’t see the ball from the third floor anyway.

  8. Maggie Says:
    May 19th, 2008 at 12:55 pm

    Boston has one too. I wonder if these all will soon become relics of a pre-Internet age…

  9. Mary Sue Says:
    May 19th, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    A hah! I have wondered about that thing for many months and now I know the sekrit code!

    There was one in Sacramento, CA I remember, but it was varying shades of red for hot, damnhot, and Holyhellit’shot.

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