Five Questions: Zach Horowitz

Note: This is the start of an occasional feature I'm calling "Five Questions". I'm shooting a small list of questions to business owners and other people involved in the life of our village. For now, the list of questions will be the same as are being answered here. If you want to play along, email me using the link to the right!

Zach Horowitz, Chair of the Multnomah Neighborhood Association

1. How long have you lived in Multnomah?
   I've lived in the Village proper for 5 years, and spent the previous 10 just a mile away.


2. What brought you to the Village?
   It's one of 2 neighborhoods in SW (other than downtown) to have shops within walking distance. I've always lived in SW Portland, so it was a logical place to live. My wife, who lived on the east side before we lived together, insisted that we live somewhere where we could walk to stuff if we lived in SW. It's the Village - it's super cool. Many of my friends live very close to here, so do my parents. This part of SW is the heart of the Jewish community - my gym used ot be the MJCC, and we are members of Neveh Shalom.


3. What would you like to see in the Village that we DON'T have?
   A few more restuarants - one open real late. A true "center" in the Village - like a little park or other community area.


4. What do you think is the biggest challenge facing our neighborhood?
   Mostly development pressure - at least the type of development that does a poor job of integrating itself into the neighborhood. Lots of young people have moved here - we need to get them involved in the community, as well as our large numbers of renters.


5. What is your favorite thing, or favorite place in Multomah?
   The small townie suburban feel, combined with the fact that we are so
   close to downtown.

Thanks Zach!

Why yes, that IS a sports bar in my parking space...

So I'm driving out to Barbur via 35th the other night, and I pass by this parking lot. I noticed that there was a trailer in there - kida the same size trailer you see pulling ATVs or something - with the sides opened up. It contained a bar. I'm not talking about your run of the mill concession trailer either. This thing had tables, chairs, and a TV. There were a couple of people sitting in there! Now I'm sure this is all kinds of illegal, as far as the city's concerned, so I'm not posting any pictures, or saying exactly where this was (is), but it wins the Unexpected Thing Award for last week.

This is clearly not any kind of a "permanent" temporary thing, like all those "mobile" lunch wagons downtown. Just had to be in the right place at the right time I suppose. I'm still kicking myself for not walking up and grabbing a table.

Progress(?) Comes to Custer Park

Tonight, Jr. V and I stopped by Custer Park for a little playground action after dinner. When we got to the top of the hill, I noticed that the merry-go-round was gone. There was a large sign next to where it used to be...

"Our Parks Levy Dollars In Action!" The sign went on to say that there were "improvements" coming to Custer Park. In the summer of 2005. OK, so maybe not so fast.

Turns out the merry-go-round, the see-saw and.. the swingset are being removed and replaced with something new. Now, I'm not that into see-saws, and the deathtrap merry-go-round's days have been numbered for a while. Although getting your leg stuck in the merry-go-round and getting drug around in the dirt has been a valuable rite of passage for generations of kids. It's the swingset that's the real loss.

Custer Park has got the geatest swings. Long, smooth chains and it's mounted on top of this huge hill overlooking the rest of the park, so when you swing you get this view that can't be beat.

Progress. Go take a swing at Custer while you still can. Don't forget... it's being improved in the "summer" of 2005!

Celebrity night at Acapulco's

So, I noticed Brian Grant's car as I was driving through the Village tonight. Looked like he was hanging out in Acapulco's Southwest Gold, chowing down on some Mexican food. The car in question is a silver Ferrari F360 which is quite nice. We've spotted it before, down in Fulton outside that French restaurant. For the record, BG's got his iPod hooked up inside.

Mrs V was very.upset. to hear that the Blazers were unable to come to terms with Brian Grant, one of our favorite players from the post-Drexler era to be sure. Yes, I am one of those Portlanders who does not approve of the recent Blazers and longs for the days of Clyde, Terry, Duck, Jerome and the "good old guys".

Some site maintenance

I have decided that I don't have it in me just yet to switch from Blogger to Movable Type. Howevder, I really want to use categories. Yesterday, I began experimenting with del.icio.us, since this blog is tagged there already.

I am currently going through and tagging all of my previous posts, and organizing the tags by category. This should make finding specific posts about say, Marco's Cafe, easier for the casual reader. After I'm done with this, I'll integrate the tags links into the main blog page (maybe). Either way there will be a prominent link directing readers to the del.icio.us page for this site.

Thanks for all the hits, and your comments, this continues to be fun. I have some cool ideas that I'll post over the next couple of weeks. Keep reading, especially all you out of town folks! Glad I can help you stay connected.

Oh, here's the in-progress del.icio.us page: http://del.icio.us/the_Villager

The weekend comes and goes

Typical stay-at-home weekend. Mrs. V had an appointment with Pam on Saturday morning, so Jr. V and I walked her up there. We then headed home, checking on the pumpkin patch and stopping at the play area beside the Multnomah Center for a bit.

The play area is due for a little maintenance. Especially the tire swing. This is likely due to the volume of larger kids that play here, and not traffic, since this play area isn't as heavily used as Gabriel Park.

We then headed down to the toy store, and dropped into Annie Bloom's for a bit after I snapped Saturday's picture post shot. I was happy to see that Annie Blooms carries Robert McCloskey books, which I remember fondly from my New England childhood.

Later that day we would all end up in Gabriel Park, accompanied by my Dad (visiting from the east coast), so Jr. V could show off his newly developed ability to cross the monkey bars without help. It was apparently "informal aerospace day" at Gabriel.... Not on the level of the space program coming to the park, but still. We had brought Jr. V's "stomp rocket" (a sort of mortar that fires with compressed air - you stomp on it. VERY.COOL.) and there was a group of people there with an "actual" model rocket, and later someone with a very large remote control plane.

Sunday would bring us back to the park with the glow-in-the-dark frisbee, a cranky Jr. V and the scooter.

We sure like living by the park. Espeically when the weather's as great as it has been!

Picture Post

This is the mural that remains on the old location of Thinker Toys, when it was in the corner building at the other end of the Village. That was some time ago. In fact, it was so long ago that I'm not even sure I clearly remember when the toy store was there - but I swear this is true (I think). Post Hip records is there now - an establishment I highly recommend, although I haven't bought any music on anything other than iTunes in an age.

Police action

So there's nothing more exciting than getting home to find at least seven police cars parked in from of your house, and all up and down the street. Turns out our neighbors place a domestic violence call on the renters across the street and down a few doors. An action that is several months overdue, in my opinion.

The cops spent over a half hour trying to get the occupants of the house to come out. We were just waiting for them to bust in, and frankly I'm suprised that they didn't considering the amount of time that they were there.

The classic bit came when they finally emerged and one of the policemen was escorting this one young woman to the squad car. "Why didn't you open the door," hes asked - HIGHLY ANNOYED. "We're the PO-lice!" This girl had obviously been drinking or smoking up or both - she answered him in an overly loud voice that could be heard all around the block...

"I was upstairs having sex with my boyfriend, and in the shower!"

That's true class, right there. That sound you hear? That's our property values dropping.

I do not believe that this woman was one fo the couple that was actually involved in the fight. We'll see what the fallout will be - or rather we'll hear it, around 2AM some evening. We gotta get that house owner to get those losers out of there. I must say, the folks on my block are not such big fans of "renters". Now, we've rented houses before and I know that there's plenty of good people in the Village that are renters. However, with the exception of when Tom lived across the street, the renters on our block are not doing anything to endear themselves to those of us that live alongside them.

That's enough police action, thanks.

One Thousandth Hit

My 1,000th hit just happened. The result of an MSN search for Otto & Anita's.
I do not so much like the German food. I do however, like big soft pretzels.
I rather enjoyed the one I had at Multnomah Days.
Despite my lack of desire for Old Country Eatin', I may have to try this place....

A lot of my hits have come from searches for Otto & Anita's. All because of a comment smeone left on one of my first posts.

Thanks for reading!

Ward, I'm getting a little worried about the Beaver...

I can't help but notice that the current issue of the Multnomah Village Post seems a little light. Mrs. V commented on the presence of only 4 photos of Multnomah Days on the back cover (the placement is due to color printing on the cover sheet). Also, their website at multnomahvillagepost dot com hasn't been updated in months.

I like our neighborhood newspaper. I hope everything's OK over there....

Breakfast with the Montana People

Mrs. V and I went to breakfast at O'Connors this morning. O'Connors, "Where Montana People Meet the Rest of the World". It was quiet, as you would suspect on a Thursday morning, with only a few couples and a large table of what appeared to be real estate inspectors, who - if not from Montana - certainly would be at home there. Mrs. V and I spent part of our first date in the bar at O'Connors, so long ago, and we used to stop in for dinner once in a while. O'Connors is one of our regular breakfast stops. I personally prefer Fat City these days, but the comprehensive menu at O'Connors is more up Mrs. V's alley.

The reasonable prices were a welcome sight after spending a long weekend in San Francisco (the reason for the lack of posts to this 'blog lately).

I ordered my usual 2x2x2, which consists of two pancakes or french toast (I prefer french toast), 2 eggs any style and bacon. O'Connors syrup is quite good. They always do the bacon right too, which is worth mentioning. Coffee is unremarkable, yet usually kept hot.

One thing I should mention is that the service is very attentive when they are AT YOUR TABLE, but can be hard to attract. If you're like me, and hate like the dickens to wait for a check once you've finished eating, you may have to be proactive. Another thing you might want to know is that O'Connors tends to have a signature scent. In their case it is peppers. Many of their great "scrambles" include some pepper which tend to fill the air with whatever peppers secrete when they're being cooked. When thingas are paritcularly busy, this can actually irritate my eyes. Today, it wasn't noticeable. There is smoking in the bar - just so you know.

Sunday morning on the back deck, during sunny weather can't be beat. Since this post is about breakfast, I won't go into their music programming, which has become much more of a regular thing - the joint's now pretty packed on weekend nights. Another time...