Art-o-Mat

Herbert Hoover — Artist — is single-handedly trying to revive the economy (and make up for his famous namesake’s inability to do the same in a previous downturn) by means of his contribution to the Art-o-Mat project.

Lisa and I recently attended an opening event for Portland’s first Art-o-Mat now residing in the Alberta district. Knowing that Herbert was present in spirit, if not in person, we biked over to check out the fancy new member of the Art-o-Mat community.

Our new Art-o-Mat is a bright red hot-rod of a machine with obvious care put into every detail from the nice paint details to the very act of transporting it safely to it’s new home at the Radio Room.

There were a few other people there to check out the new art dispenser and one fine patron at the bar even offered to purchase my token from the bar tender. So off I went — token in hand — to find the object in question.

Sure enough, right there in the first slot, was Herbert’s pewter pretzel. After feeding the token into the magnificent machine, the little white standardized box with Herbert’s custom labeling emerged (from the slot no doubt used in the past for something with a picture of a camel) into the delivery tray below.

The pewter pretzel

Knowing that Herbert’s previous saltine offering find’s life in poses and places throughout the world through his Cracker Tracker website, I figured that this pretzel had something special to offer. So sure enough, as I was off to my shop in “the hole” (home of the P.90 camera) I encountered a common impediment — a freight train heading east along Sullivan’s Gulch. Rather than simply wait for the train to pass as is my usual habit, it occurred to me that the pretzel sitting on the seat next to me might offer a solution. So I put on the parking brake and got out to test my hunch. As you can clearly see from the video below, the pretzel came through in splendid form. Watch and listen closely and you too will find that the pretzel posses the amazing ability to increase the speed of the passing train.

Reminded that Herbert’s artistic skills also include pinhole photography and pleased with the time-saving benefits of this pewter object, I put the pretzel away and made my way up to the shop to work on the latest production of P.90 cameras.

TriMet, the Portland area transit authority, recently opened the new North/South light rail route in the downtown area. After a lengthy period of construction, traffic snarls and businesses struggling to deal with the turmoil, a free-ride day opened the new route.

It is interesting to sense the contrast between the modern electric-powered transit infrastructure and the classically inspired buildings.

Replacing all but one lane of automobile traffic on two major downtown streets is an example of the self conscious decision Portland made about it’s transportation future. And yet it could be argued that Portland’s growing network of light rail is, if anything, a lesson learned from the past.

The sleek new MAX light rail train

There was once an extensive network of electric trolleys throughout Portland. Like so many other American cities, the automobile led to the eventual abandonment of most of that legacy.

It’s perhaps ironic to contemplate the fact that some of the the earliest Portland trolley lines were set up as real estate promotion lines although this is not true of the trolley shown below.

Mt Tabor Trolley — PDXHistory.com

The PDXHistory.com web site has an interesting page of early streetcar history in Portland which includes the photo above — Mt. Tabor Car No. 438 near 65th & Belmont.

Our habit of taking the occasional walking tour of Portland’s architecture was rewarded on this particular day by the beautiful light that often follows a bit of rain while there’s still water on the ground.

I enjoy that brief time between the soft light of a overcast day and the challenging light of a cloudless sky when things seem especially vibrant. We seized the moment and strolled along to take in some less familiar buildings from the city’s past.

Bet even here were reminders of the troubled economy.

It was a nice distraction from the Bungaloft project.

We’re thinking it would be cool to have a small group of people who would like to do architecture walks. Maybe a Meetup group is in the works …

The summer spent digging through the layers of history, dismantling and casting aside the broken parts to begin the restoration and improvement of our little house is now running headlong into the rigors of 20 degree weather and the rapid passage of precious time. If a definition of learning is — make a mistake, size up the result and then decide whether you can live with it or need to tear it apart and redo it, then I should be ready to defend my dissertation sometime next summer. It’s just a question of whether it will be in archeology, temporary weather abatement practices or living in impossibly small spaces while worrying about being unemployed.

Or perhaps my relationship with this blog will be key to the learning experience. It started as a means to flexibly expand upon my website that is presently stuck in html gridlock. I thought it would be a way to explore the idea embodied in the title I gave it — Métier.  That wonderful French word for which one definition is “Work or activity for which a person is particularly suited” seemed to sum up a lot of the question that seems to preoccupy mine leisure thoughts - what the heck am I suited for? But the premature end of work in the shop and the big hole that left in my schedule made it seem the time was ripe for remodelling the house. We had been thinking about it for years. So why not just start posting to the blog about the house project as well?

What I didn’t count on was the ravenous beast the house project would turn into. It’s easy enough to play the philosophical card and just imagine how great it will be that about a third (maybe a half?, two thirds?) of the house will actually be new when we are done with it. But the transition from mild despair to grudging acceptance of the inevitable eventually left me feeling apprehensive about laying the whole mess out on the table to fully examine it. Then add to that my sense of WTF? when I discovered that in my attempt to eliminate the scourge of bogus users registering on the blog I had also eliminated Lisa and all of her posts. Blogger paralysis .…

So, with with this December entry on a morning when it is possibly too cold for a mere Portland resident raised in Texas to do anything outside, I throw down the gauntlet and challenge myself to live the fully examined life. Blog on … and put that gauntlet back on — it’s cold!

I thus continue by following up this post with Lisa’s now belated last post that more fully informs the comment that begins this post.

Every year that we can manage it, we will go to the Hood River Fruit Loop tour. (But then we’ll accept just about any excuse to drive out to the Columbia River Gorge.) The hills leading up to Mount Hood are a beautiful backdrop to the agricultural endeavors that bring us so much culinary delight. We always enjoy stopping at different places each year to see if we can remember where we went the year before. It’s just one of the little joys of getting older …

This year we decided to reverse our usual route so that we might arrive at one of our favorite destinations in time for lunch. This great house sits just across the street from the Apple Valley Country Store and Bakery. Since I’m right in the middle of rebuilding our porch, I have a heightened awareness of porches — and this is a particularly substantial example.

So the first order of business is standing in line next to the smoker for some barbecue. A little solo guitar music playing in the background made up for the annoying over-parenting going on behind us. Once lunch was finished, it was time to go into the store and sample the wide variety of fruit jams and preserves that they produce and sell. If there is still room after lunch and sampling, there also good pies being made and served on site as well.

Towards the end of our tour we once again sought out this amazing, iconoclastic apple and pear orchard — The Mount Hood Organic Farms and Cottages. The proprietor has not only a wealth of fruit knowledge but also a proclivity for eccentric architecture as well. The photo above is his vintage apple sorter in a long room apparently designed to house it.

The odd thing to me is the apparent disconnect between my experience of the place and the one presented on their web site. Perhaps the eccentric architecture crowd just isn’t well-heeled enough to go after.

This is a detail of some of the work underway to decorate the building compound that looks to be a long term owner/builder project.

A view across several of the buildings gives a sense of the overall effect. Of course, much more of it is under construction than completed at this point.

Before we depart, Lisa takes in a view of Mount Hood from the large inviting green in front of the buildings. Her view from that vantage point is directly towards the magnificent Mt. Hood.

Peel P50

At 6′ 5″ inches tall, my interest in things small might seem inexplicable, but the fact remains — small things are cool. And there is not much cooler than a Peel P50. Check out the links at left and @ the image of the Peel P50 above for some great shots of this great little vintage wonder.

Isetta plus teardrop

When I was a bit shorter my father worked for Porsche Cars Southwest in San Antonio, Texas, the southwest regional distributor for Porsche (“por sha, not porsh” as he used to say.) I grew up around interesting cars and car people.
So when my young eyes first glimped a BMW Iseta, I knew that it was just about the coolest thing a car could be — small. Of course, the next logical step is to add a teardrop trailer — another growing interest of mine. An even smaller one can be seen here on the Tales and Trails website.

The park — in the middle of Naito Parkway!

One wet Portland afternoon Lisa and I set off on one our periodic architecture tours in the downtown area. I decided it was time to visit Portland’s smallest park.

Mill Ends Park

It was a perfect, rainy Portland afternoon, the kind that makes color sublime and car tires hiss. Mill Ends Park, created as a home for leprechauns, appears with different vegetative scenery in every picture you will find of it.
Portland being a center of the once booming lumber industry, the term Mill’s End refers to the pieces left over in the process of converting tress to lumber. The story of the park’s creation is an interesting bit of Portland history and worth investigating at the Portland Parks and Recreation site.

The current theme.

After more demolition of yet another wall we found this card for Hodes Auto Parts neatly tucked into the paper lining behind the fir lap sheathing. I liked the vintage look of the card and since it too came from an apparently original wall, I guessed that it too would date from 1928 when the house was originally constructed. I did a quick search on the internet later that evening and found a reference to a postcard with an advertisement for Hodes Auto Parts dating to 1928 — Bingo!

Then it occurred to me why the design looked so familiar. The logo I created for my camera design business was intentionally created to have a vintage look and it bears a remarkable resemblance to Hodes’ card.
It must be a sign …

I placed the logo on a similar card size here to show the resemblance.

In other news, my wife Lisa is beginning her contributions to the Bungaloft section of the Metier blog. Look for the first installment coming soon.

Kurt

After having found a Ku Klux Clan newspaper in the attic a while back I was pleasantly surprised to find this visitor from simpler days carefully placed inside one of our recently dismantled interior walls. I think I’ll build a small niche in one of the new walls to reinstall the card and then try to determine where this dairy might have been.

CIAO,
Kurt

In the meantime work on the 5 inch pan camera bluetooth controller project continues.

The 28th Avenue Woodworking Studios (as I have now unofficially christened this building I work in) has some very interesting inhabitants including Jason Andrew Designs. Jason has been working on a beautiful series of furniture pieces since he arrived. Following numerous conversations about our respective work, we embarked upon a bit of collaboration on Jason’s most recent design — a twisting, black-stained, Ash coffee table. Jason asked me to make a set of aluminum feet for the tapered legs of the table. We’re looking at a few other designs for aluminum feet and pulls.

I’m be looking forward to the usual barrage of summer activity including one of my favorites — the Adult Soapbox Derby.

Starting line at the Adult Soapbox Derby in Portland, Oregon

The competitive spirit thrives and the water flies.

I made this photo with a P.90 pinhole camera. In contrast to the digital camera experience, this kind of subject (with a lot of motion) is a situation in which the result is always a pleasant surprise once the film is processed.

Oaks Park along the waterfront is a small amusement park adjacent to a city park and a wildlife refuge. It is over 100 years old. On a cool, misty, Portland day in early May there were a lot of families out keeping the children entertained and hoping for the return of summer weather.

I was originally attracted to this place when I heard about the floating floor of the roller rink. At Oaks Park there is an indoor rink with a beautiful 100 ft by 200 ft wooden floor. Because the area next to the river is historically prone to flooding, the floor structure is made so that it can be detached from the building when flooding is eminent. Because the floor rests on floats it is then able to float above the possible flood waters until they recede. The last time this happened was 1996.

In addition, the Oaks Park rink has the largest remaining skating-rink pipe organ in the world. Impressive even for a non-skater like me.

A stroll around downtown Portland led me to the old customs building. It is a beautiful structure facing a downtown park. About a 15 minute exposure with the P.90 prototype during a conversation with a curious passerby led to this image.

The following information on this building was provided by Bart King from his book:

An Architectural Guidebook to Portland

9. U.S. Custom House 1901; addition 1938
220 NW Eighth Avenue
Architect: James Knox Taylor/Supervisor: Edgar M. Lazarus

This massive and somewhat unusually designed building sits regally within a full city block and on top of a huge in-fill. The Custom House was substantially built up on its site to avoid the flooding problems that plagued this part of town during the early 1900s, and its pilings go down 80–100 feet.

Variously described by as French Renaissance or Italian Renaissance Revival, the ornamentations of this classical, granite-faced building is fascinating. Columns, scrolls, quoins, arches. dentils, and keystones abound. Find the terra cotta lintel stones over the window arches showing interesting governmental symbols like the staff of Aesculapius, and the dreaded glove on a stick.

Among the profusion, one finds images of scales adorning the building. These reflect both the weighing of goods inspected for customs and the traditional scales of justice. Courthouses were originally intended for the top two floors of the Custom House, and revenue from customs duties was an important function of Portland’s waterfront. The forbidding ironwork on the windows of the first floor is original to the building, and was designed to protect confiscated contraband and bureaucratic treasures like seals and paperwork.

Inside, with over 100,000 square feet, there is a lot of building to explore. A 1977 restoration helps the marble and classical plaster moldings welcome the eye, and a grand cast-iron stairway rises to the fourth floor. (The top floors of the east and west wings were added in 1938.) The two towers visible from the front (west side) of the building are for ventilation, and do not contain bells. In 1906, a small metal tower was built near the north chimney that dropped a large “time” ball at noon each day. Sailors would sight it and set their ship clocks accordingly. Construction to the east of the Custom House eventually obstructed the tower, and it was removed in 1925.

In 2005, the General Service Administration (which manages all federal buildings) announced possible plans for a developer to transform the Custom House into a mixed-use building. The idea is to house a hotel here and perhaps also have space for the University of Oregon architecture school. Creating public accessibility to this beautiful building is an exciting prospect; expect the huge open courtyard enclosed by the elegant loggia on the west side to attract coffee drinkers.

James Knox Taylor (1857–1929) was the Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury when he designed this building. An advocate of classical design, Taylor worked with Cass Gilbert (architect of the U.S. Supreme Court Building) before establishing his own practice. Building supervisor Edgar Lazarus is well known for his distinctive Vista House design in the Columbia Gorge.