Lost In Translation

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

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

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

Sort of.

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

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

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

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

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

And indeed it was.

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

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

Kevin, the INTERNET is for porn...

...and the passing lane is for passing. And - this is just advice, mind you - you're supposed to pass a crime scene, not drive into it.

"When officers found the driver, identified as Kevin Signalness, they said he had his pants unzipped and a pornographic magazine laying on the passenger seat."

IMO this guy gets convicted on the mug shot alone. One thing I love about my hometown; even our criminals are weird.

Stay classy, Portland.

No pity in the Rose City...

Big fun today at the annual Rose Festival. It must have something to do with having kids...

"Rose Festival" is one of those Portland things that identifies you as a real Portlander (as opposed to some freaking yahoo from somewhere southeast of Gresham) by the degree of total disregard you have for it. I think that before this year it must have been almost a decade since I "did" a Rose Festival event. This isn't a Cool Thing in Portland like the Rose City Rollers or the Adult Soap Box Derby. This is Portland's "official" springtime whoopdey-doo, a grab-bag of crap ranging from parades (at least three) to an airshow, rubber duck races (not nearly as cool as it sounds, believe it or not), and a visit from various flavors of warship.

The only reasonable approach to most of this stuff is to ignore it; it's fairly ridiculous, corporate "fun", the parades the usual bagatelle of bands, floats, princesses and clowns set amid a seething mass of underclothed, overfed white people from places like Roselawn and Happy Valley and everything else is overpriced and overpopulated. You get a pass if your participation has something to do with a sport or sport-like enthusiasm, like running or paddling in the dragon boat races.

But for the most part I desperately try and avoid the mess that is the Rose Fest downtown. In the Nineties it was worse than just bohick, it was downright dangerous; the combination of beer sales and packs of urban gangsters made the "Fun Center" (as the Festival committee insisted on calling the nasty little carny that takes over Waterfront Park) like Dodge City without the four fingers of Ol' Red-eye. Our local alt-weekly ran a pithy little essay entitled "Facedown in the Fun Center" or something to that effect, detailing the disaster that was this wretched carny.

Well, time, death, and the jails cleaned out the gangsters, the beer sales were curtailed and the place is now less skanky, but generally we still try and avoid the mess that is downtown during "Fleet Week". But this time Uncle Brent was holding the steering oar for Team Macpaddle, and the Peeper wanted to go see his hero steer to glory, so bright and early we got on the Maxine Train (as little Miss and I decided it should be called) and rode down with the crowds to the waterfront.

We walked - Little Miss rode her little umbrella stroller - down past the massively fenced, gated and securitized U.S. Navy DDG and the Canadian corvettes (you can't tour the things unless you want to stand in line for hours, and what with the fences and gates you can't really see them all that well, I don't see the PR value for the USN or the RCN and why they still send them is beyond me...) and the open, friendly and businesslike Coast Guard cutters, past the carnival, under the Hawthorne bridge, and there we were, amidst thousands of dragon boaters and an acre of goose shit.We met Brent and had a nice coze before he had to go with his team to get ready to race. The kids and I went down to the riverside to throw rocks in the water, play with sticks and lost goose feathers, watch the people, the geese and the boats, and wait for Uncle Brent to race.

Well, Brent steered very well - the Macpaddle boat went straight as a die - and the team paddled...mmm...a lot. But...just not very fast.

Brent was very manly about it, and it didn't seem to diminish his friend Heidi's respect for him any.

So, having duly cheered him, we walked back, past the ships, past the carnival..."the strong man Sampson lifts the midget little Tiny Tim way up on his shoulders, way up, and carries him on down the midway, past the kids, past the sailors, and the ferris wheel turns and turns like it ain't ever gonna stop..."

On the way we stopped for the Peeper to ride some of the rides, and eat a cookie at Saturday Market, and then back on the train again and up to North, and Bob the Subaru, and home and naps and TV and lunches.No crying. No meltdowns. No bickering, snapping, tantrums, or fussing. Just two sweet kids and a happy daddy. Nice."And the highway's haunted by the carnival sounds
They dance like a great greasepaint ghost on the wind"

Update 6/8: Like a good Hollywood story, the Macpaddles (whose Saturday was one of those montages where the hero boxer staggers and ducks, trying to stay upright as the evil heavyweight smacks him around as the flashbulbs pop and the hero's adoring girl and fight-film eye candy [that'd be you, Heidi] wrings her handkerchief in anguish...) came roaring back, paddles flashing, on Sunday, took two second-places in the heats and then won in a frantic sprint to the line to take their division, with Uncle Brent filling in for an injured paddler (OK, he just had to bail at the last minute) to power the team to victory. You know the script: "Cinderella story, former groundskeeper...about to be...the Master's champion."Yay, Uncle Brent!

No, no podemos

I see with weary derision that the push to name a street, ANY street, after Cesar Chavez has returned, like the swallows and the tulips, to Portland.Again we're hearing how ANYthing but a street is an insult to Hispanic Americans in general and Chavez in particular.

Again, everyone is desperately dancing around the subject of why all the white people (i.e. 80% of Portland) aren't all excited about this so as not to appear a racist prick.

I AM a racist prick, so I'll just come right out and say it.

I see no particular reason to name a Portland street after Chavez. He has no particular resonance with me as a national hero - I'm not Hispanic and I'm not a farmworker - and he has no real connection with Portland or Oregon other than the fact that our farmworkers benefitted from his activism.

I would add that in my opinion this is NOT the same thing as naming a street after Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. Both of those civil rights activists were fighting for civil rights; the right of every American, regardless of race, or beliefs, or gender, or origin, to share in the liberties and responsibilities that we believe make this nation unique.Cesar Chavez was a lovely man. He struggled valiantly to improve the lot of Hispanic farm workers in particular, and Hispanic-Americans in general (to a somewhat lesser degree) through unionization and education. But for the most part his struggle was limited to that: Hispanic farm workers. Period.

For a Hispanic-American to revere the man and wish to honor him is laudible and understandible.

For an Anglo like me...why? What did Cesar Chavez fight for that should resonate with me? Why should I want to name a street after him and not, say, Sergeant Jose Lopez or Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez?

You want me to join in honoring a Hispanic American?

Tell me that we should rename 39th Avenue "Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez Avenue".

Tell me that we should honor a Hispanic-American who struggled and sacrificed - almost sacrificed his life, not for lack of trying - for all of us as a volunteer three times over, as a soldier, as a paratrooper and as a Special Forces NCO.

Or, if you feel skeetchy about the ethics of the Vietnam War, pick Joe Lopez. Hell of a man, helped defeat the Evil Nazis, tough stud of the Tomahawks, the 23rd U.S. Infantry. I'd be proud to drive my clapped-out old Ford Ranger down a street named after SGT Lopez.

Don't take it the wrong way, Cesar. But you gotta understand - there's things a guy just feels strongly about. And one of them is that you gotta stick to your homeboys, the guys who have your back, your pals. ¿Ese, vato? Even if one of them DID wear the Gaggin' Dragon back in the day...

¿Nombre una calle después de uno des sargentos?

Si, se puede.

No Joy in Mudville

There are bad ideas. Then there are REALLY Bad Ideas. And then are REALLY, REALLY, BAD IDEAS.

And then there's "Cooking with Dr. Pepper"...

As the commentator notes: "Any man comes home and finds his bride pouring a bottle of Dr. P in the sauce pan, he's going to snatch from her hand, grab her wrist with one hand, clasp the back of her neck with the other and bring her face to his, just to reaffirm his horrible suspicions: she's been drinking again.

He would be wrong. He would be a brute. She was only doing what the book suggested."

But to give you an idea of where I'm at right now, I'd have to tell you that I would personally gnaw my way through steel bars and low-crawl naked over a kilometer of broken glass to devour a thick slab of Dr. Pepper-marinated meatloaf with Dr. Pepper slaw and a Dr. Pepper on the side.I'm freaking famished. My internal flora has gone completely, dramatically wrong and has been for almost a week now. I've been subsisting on crackers and bread for three days without result. Today is a complete fast - water only. And of course, my unruly brain has been tormenting me with images of charcoal broiled New York strip...fresh tomatoes direct from the garden with sea salt, brie and basil...buttery prawns in garlic sauce...clean, briny hamachi with the sweet ginger and hot, hot tang of the wasabi...

Sweetbabyjesus, just kill me now...arrrgh.

Anyway, yesterday was a long, rough day in the field, working a steep site in Portland's West Hills. Hard drilling in the drizzly cold, and me just wanting to lay down and sleep all freaking day.This is the worst kind of internal disorder; it just feels like someone has stuck a tap in me and left it wide open. I can feel my energy draining away like...mmmm, let's not talk about water running, eh?

At one point I just lay on my back in the ivy and didn't move for five minutes. I could have gone to sleep there. Seriously.

The one interesting thing about yesterday was that the part of the West Hills I was working in was the site of the famous West Hills Martini Glass, a Christmas light icon that has loured over our Xmas drinkers since some time in the 1970's. During the MADD '90s the glass got one of those "no" red-circle-and-slash things that the homeowner would turn on at 10pm to signify Last Call.

So one of the few high points of the day was a long moment in the late afternoon when I could stop and just look over the railing across the Portland basin and enjoy the whole wierd Portland goofiness of this gigantic cocktail glass.

The story I've heard is that the homeowner actually inherited the martini along with the house and the damn thing is now a multi-generational project. It's funny to see the actual hooks and wires behind the big martini I've seen for years while zipping along I-405...

I'll try and get back soonest; it's just hard to find the energy to blog when you don't have the energy to, say, cook, clean or work.

Ugh.

(h/t to Jim Lileks for the Dr. Pepper cookbook)

Cool Things in North Portland: Jantzen Beach Carousel

It's been a week sort of week. You know, nothing special, but a crosscut through daily life: a little rough, a little smooth, a little fun, a little flat, but all in all the sort of everyday family thing that Tolstoy blew off with that bullshit about happy families all being alike?

Yeah, count on an author to go with the quotable rather than the facts.

So we had a sort of hereandthereian weekend, a little home improvement, a little yard work, a little Caillou and a little Kai-lan and some pasta noodles and a toy or three. By Sunday afternoon we needed some out-of-the-house fun and the result was a trip to the Jantzen Beach Mall to ride the great old classic carousel there.Hayden Island today is a tawdry tumble of big-box stores and the Mall, a Seventies atrocity first-generation shopping mall that always looks half deserted and ready to close. Possibly the tawdry-est of touches was the Tale of Waddles.

Waddles was some sort of freaking iconic diner place off of the interstate on Hayden Island. I ate there a couple of times in the Nineties, enh, it was belly timber in an odd little kitschy setting, nothing spectacular. But when it died its natural death it was replaced by...a Hooters.

Yep.

The original "Excuse me, waiter, but there's a nipple in my buffalo wings" place. The ginormous Hooters sign towers over the approach to the Interstate bridge like a Great Horned Owl perched over a vole run, if a Great Horned Owl was required to wear "nude" colored pantyhose under its teeny, tiny, owl-ass-grabbing, orange short-shorts. Typically, Portlanders piled up a huge thunderhead of emotion over the galvanization of the beloved, yet deserted, Waddles into one in a chain of overpriced breast-themed redneck Budweiser joints and then, when the hurly-burly was done and the day lost and won went back to ignoring the place (outside the rednecks who went for the salty, dry wings, spendy beer and inaccessible young lovelies).

Hmmmm.But Hayden Island's heyday was back between the Wars, when the Jantzen Swimwear company opened the "Jantzen Beach Amusement Park", the biggest Disneyland pre-Disney in the West Coast. It had the whole bijoux: roller coasters, midget racers, a midway, dance hall, natorium...you name it. Along with the famous carousel. It survived depression, war and flood but was unable to cope with age and the decline of the non-princess-themed amusement park. By 1970 it was Six Flags Over Nothing and was buried under the blacktop of a typical Disco Era mall. Which, in turn, was mostly razed in the Nineties for a big box parking lot. A small part of the old mall lives on, anchored by those retail outlets beloved by those of us who love cheap plastic crap: Burlington Coat Factory, Ross Dress For Less and Target.

The carousel remains, last of the amusement rides, remnant of the old mall, a whirling delight of grandiloquent carved horses and antique showmanship of an earlier time. The Peeper was once terrified of the horses and now clambers aboard with the aplomb of a kindergarten-size gaucho, reeling and bouncing with the music, the speed, and the colors. Little Miss had her first rides today; the very first was a little scary - she wedged in firmly in front of her mommy, clung to the fixed pole, and looked about a little nervously, unsure about all these loud noises and lights and excited people. But by the time it was Daddy's turn she was sold. She chanted "Up and down" every time the wooden hayburner went...ummm...up and down. And when we were done she chanted "More horse rides!" until long after we were back in Bob the Subaru and on the road home. For two bucks, it's a hell of a fun trip; Missy will even tell you so!I didn't bring the camera, more's the pity, so I've thrown in some compensation in the form of little Peep at Columbia Park Annex swinging, and Little Miss in her adorable tractoralls, hand-me-downs from big brother. They sure were sweeties this weekend.

They're dreaming now, hopefully of the twirling horses and the fun of wheeling to the carnival music, and I should be, too. But if you're ever travelling between Seattle and San Francisco and needing a carousel break, now you know where to look.

And tell the girls at Hooter's I sent 'ya.

Update 2/25: Interesting little piece of historical trivia about the carousel I forgot:

Turns out that several of the horses were originally carved with "good luck" swastikas somewhere on their harness or apparel. I was unaware until well into my adulthood of the long pre-Nazi history of the device, although I had seen it on the endpapers of several older volumes of Kipling's writing (he used it as a personal emblem/charm probably because of it's long association with India and Hinduism). So no real surprise that amid all the fantastic ears of corn, shields and animal pelts the carver(s) made a few swastikas.

But after WW2 the swastika-horses were removed from the carousel. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I understand why it was done, but regret the way the owners chose easy capitulation to public sentiment over trying to explain historical fact.