Multnomah Village Yahoo! Group

So I just got this email from someone who is looking for an online forum in which to discuss some issues she's having in her part of the neighborhood. Issues with shady characters and potential crime. So this has led me to admit that I've been remiss in mentioning that there is a Yahoo! Group for the Village online at well, Yahoo! groups.

I am not involved in this group, although I have joined now, even though this was mentioned like 4 months ago at the neighborhood association meeting. I am just not really into the whole Yahoo! group thing. Not sure if this will help the sender of this email - I suspect that posting the contact information for our nieghborhood's police officer would be more useful. That will have to come later, I'm at the office and left his card at home.

So if you're into the Yahoo! groups thing and you want to talk about the Village, go join up.

Topanien

Yesterday, after taking a conference call meeting on the back deck at home, doing some work via my wireless net (which is a good way to start the day), I decided to go in to my actual office a little late and head up the street with Mrs. V and Jr. V and grab some breakfast at O'Connor's. It was a quiet morning in the Village, we had O'Connor's pretty much to ourselves. Why is it that it takes so long to get a check in that place? Nevermind - the food was great as usual and Mrs. V had enough to take home for today.

We're coming out onto they sidewalk and noticed Nadine (I'm pretty sure it was Nadine, it's been a while and I was down the block) putting some merchandise out in front of Topanien. I realized that I've never written about this little store the whole time I've been keeping this 'blog, despite their being one of the linchpins of the village (since 1989).

I'm not one to frequent the "incense and Buddha" stores, typically, but I must say that Topanien has a very high-quality selection of goods from a wdie range of cultures that appeal to both me and Mrs. V. We were last in there buying a small charm for a friend of Mrs. V that is going through cancer treatment. Topanien is certainly the most colorful store in the Village, it practically GLOWS yellow at you.

I am pleased to report that Topanien has a very complete website, from which you can actually view and order products! It's at Topanien.com. There's also lots of information about their commitment to fair-trade goods and Amnesty International, among other social causes.

So anyway, I though it was about time I wrote about them.

Multnomah Days 2006: Everything got bigger!

So I'm not going to go into huge detail just yet, I'll post again on the topic of this year's Multnomah Days, but I wanted to get a few thoughts and teh picture gallery up.

A few impressions of this year's Multnomah Day festivities in convenient bullet-list form:

• The parade seemed at least twice as long this year
• How many churches and day care centers do we have in this neighborhood anyway? (answer = a lot)
• Sam Adams, once again, plays well to a crowd. No wonder he continues to be the favorite politico of pretty much anywhere in Portland. I mean, unless you're talking about the tram...
• We do NOT approve of the carny vendor types selling cheap plastic swords, trumpets and other carnival junk along the parade route. And it's not just us, this sentiment was shared by several others around us. There's a very definite line between our neighborhood festival and the ROSE festival, and we'd like to keep it that way, thanks.
• Free snow cones! Score!!
• We're a little nervous about the hippie circus guys, but we're learing to live with it.
• Oh, and we skipped the movie to attend a friend's birthday, How'd it go?

Of course there are photos. I got shots of most of the parade. There are 67 shots in the gallery, so if you were in the parade - you may well be in one of these pictures. You can use the graphic button at the top of the screen to go directly to the photo gallery from this year. If you're reading this post on an RSS feed, use this link:

Multnomah Days 2006 Photo Gallery

I'd be happy to supply my full-resolution images, if you're in one of the pictures, or you just see a shot you like. The full res JPEGs expand to around 11MB, which will give you enough resolution for a 31"x23" image at screen resolution, or a 5x7 at full offset press resolution (300ppi). It's more than sufficient for a 8x10 image from an inkjet or photo printer. More Details are on the gallery page.

Here's a link to Last Year's Gallery....

Hope you had fun - we saw so many people we knew. Lots of nice suprise meetings along the street, and even my former co-workers Mark and Shari bringing up the rear of the parade in Mark's vintage Datsun. Same time next year?

Warning: Shameless Plug Ahead

Don't worry, it's only "kind of" advertising. Anyway, I got this email this morning (more than once actually) from the ladies at Fusion, and it's the least I can do to post it, especially since Tamara has been one of my most regular readers and commenters. Not to mention someone with whom I need to make an appointment, like RIGHT AWAY. Happy 3 year anniversary!

FUSION SALON wants to thank all of our customers for making our first 3 yrs. in business a great success and a fun time. Help us celebrate our 3 yr. anniversary during the month of September with great specials and give-always.

If you have your cut/color done during the same visit you will receive $5.00 off .
Retail Sale: buy 2 products and get one free (same or equal value).
All new clients receive $5.00 off any color services.
Men haircuts always include a shampoo/condition/massage for only $20.

Look for us online at http://www.fusioncutandcolor.com
for all the latest in news, specials and happenings at the salon.

Hope to see you during the infamous Mult Days this Sat Aug 19th.

We are inspired by you.
Tamara and Adrienne

Movie Night this SATURDAY

So there's a nice little writeup about the Multnomah Outdoor Cinema in that little pull-out "inPortland" section of today's paper. I'd link to the article, but after spending way too much time clicking through the despised Oregonlive.com, which eventually crashed my browser - you're just giong to have to pick up the paper to read this one. When you do, you'll have to excuse the fact that the Oregonian's reporter thinks that Riversgate Church is called Riverside Church. They also state waht a wonderful "new idea" this outdoor cinema thing is. Now while it's new for the Village, I would point out that outdoor cinemas are all the rage this summer with at least three other ones going on around town including the "dive-ins" up at Wilson and how long have they been doing that? But what are you gonna do? This ain't the New York Times, people. Our loss.

No, I'm serious - there's Pioneer Square, the roof of the rewly refurbished Hotel Mallory's parking garage, the Wilson dive-ins, and probably more that I don't know about. Don't these people read the A&E section?

Still, on to more positive things! The bottom line is that there's a movie this week (the Goonies), but it's on Saturday night instead of Friday, to coincide with Multnomah Days. Plan for quite a crowd, and since it's supposed to be 90 degrees on Saturday bring some extra quarters for that extra snow cone you've been talking about.

Picture Postcard: Jacqueline's Found & Fabulous

Here's a photo for you of a small corner of the luxurious landscaping outside Jacqueline's Found & Fabulous. This photo was taken last night, as Jr. V and I were walking up to the playground for a bit. It has been treated with the "Dooce Effect"

Multnomah Days Gets Blurbed in the Trib

As part of the media frenzy leading up to Multnomah Days (this weekend, folks), the Portland Tribune has published this short article pointing out what an Incredible Dog Wonderland the Village will be, come Saturday morning.

That'll do wonders for our "comps"

Longtime readers may remember this post [The Multnomah Villager: Police action]... Well, here's how the whole series of events has played out. No, I don't know what became of any of the residents, but the house has moved on to bigger and better things.

Some time ago now, the renters left and the house began an extensive renovation. New roof - new pretty much everything. Landscaping, new turf, new windows, carport was freshened up and a very short time ago a for sale sign went up on the former den of iniquity. We eagerly awaited the information flyers to find out how much it was going to be. rumors were rampant of a hefty price. Several nieghbors strolled across the street to grab a flyer when they went up.

$499,000!

This was like 3 weeks ago. At the end of last week, I noticed a "sale pending" sticker up on the sign. This neighborhood's getting expensive. At this rate, the 2-and-a-half story place back there off of 36th is going to be 800 grand.

Wikipedia

So a couple of days ago, a link to this 'blog was added to the Multnomah Village entry on Wikipedia. Since then, I've gotten several hits from this link. That doesn't suprise me. What surprises me is that there are apparently so many people looking up Multnomah Village in the Wikipedia! Go figure.

That's enough navel-gazing for today. Thanks for the hits, Wikipedia!

Wow - one month 'til school starts...

I know, big deal, but in our house this will be the first day of school, as Jr. V packs off to Kindergarten at Maplewood on Sept. 11th. If any of you have kids that are starting there this year as well, there's a "New Parent Orientation" on the morning of the 11th to show us all the ropes. Here's the deets.

We remember what it was like to come here for the first time and not know how things work or what to expect during the year, so we have put together this informational gathering.

Monday, September 11th, 2006
8:15 - 9:00 AM
Maplewood School Library

Come have a cup of coffee and find out about things like:

School Logistics including: AM arrival, buses, cafeteria and lunch questions, volunteering, school calendar, sick child, after school pick up, snow days, going home with a friend, celebrating birthdays

Timeline for School Sales such as: Book Fair, school photos, Maplewood t-shirts, Used Book Sale

Special Events like: Carnival, Fall Picnic and Open House, Grandparents Day, Halloween Parade, Bookbaggers, Math Night, Spring Sing

Fundraising Calendar including: Maplewood Campaign, wrapping paper sale, cookie dough and coffee sale, Read-aloud-a-thon, Run for the Arts, SCRIP, supermarket and bank donation programs

The transition to a new school can be filled with questions and unknowns. We hope to shed some light and make you feel as welcome and comfortable as possible. This will also be a great chance to meet other new parents and get to know some of the PTA parents too. And bring your questions - chances are if you are wondering, other parents are too. We hope you can come!

General 'Blog Maintenance Rambling...

So this post isn't about the Village, it's just some notes about the ongoing process of maintaining this 'blog. "Administrivia", a friend of mine calls it. I've gotten a couple nice comments in the last few days from regular readers, which I really appreciate. It's pretty cool to have started something up that's become part of the resource pool of the Internet, albiet for a small group of people. That was one of my goals in starting this site - to offer a resource where one didn't exist before.

I'm fascinated by the search terms people use to get to this site. Being a data nerd, I love to sift through my sitemeter stats and see where the hits are coming from, etc. All I have to say there is "Thanks, Google." I get about 98% of my traffic from Google, and no, I haven't done any Search Engine Optimization (or advertising) other than including well-constructed META keyword, description and geographi location tags.

I got a question last night about my "Neighborhood Association Meeting Widget" at the top of the page. This only applies if you read this 'blog at the site - those of you on RSS aggregators aren't going to see this. Bad news: It's not a widget. I just hand-code it into the template. I have to remember to change the date every month. Regular readers will realize that I don't always do that.

And yes, this layout is a template - fooled with in only the most minimum of ways, and the site is still hosted by Blogger. I registered http://www.multnomahvillager.com some time ago, but it's just a pointer page to this site. If I wasn't so darn lazy I'd figure out how to properly install WordPress or MovableType on my web host and port this site over. I'll do it at some point, but this is pretty easy to maintain, and since this is certainly not my day job, that's not going to happen real soon.

But I'm having fun doing this and I enjoy that fact that people read it and comment, so thanks! Feel free to link me from your own sites, or tell a friend.

Gabriel Park Play Area Status

Many folks have commented lately about the state of the childrens' play area at Gabriel Park. I've spent may hours over there in the past five years, and was dismayed when the small slides were damaged, then removed. I've posted in the past about the removal of the fitness course down by the volleyball courts. This area was loved by Jr. V and referred to as "the rocks area" around our house and on this 'blog. When Jr. V and I were up at the park the other day, I noticed a series of white spray-painted dots all around the contours of the playground. It had the look of a survey about it, and I was curious. So I went to Portland Online and looked up the Parks Department to see if there were any plans to improve this area. Not finsing any info, I sent an email to the Parks Dept asking about any future plans.

I didn't expect more than a form-letter response, but I just got (at 11:00 PM) a lengthy response from Pat Billings (which CC:d half the city government) about the plans for our park. I'm a little stunned, and very pleased with the completeness of this response! The entire message is quoted below, for your info:

There are not any immediate plans to replace the PAR exercise course that was removed at Gabriel last fall.  We do not have funds available but it is on a long list of Capitol Improvement Projects (CIPs).  We would welcome a donation for a new course as just the cost of the equipment is 10 to 20 thousand dollars (depending on how much equipment) without including the cost of installation.  
 
I am not sure when the course was installed.  I don't remember it being there when I started working for Parks in the early seventies.  I do know that the funds were donated by the now defunct Holiday Park Hospital and a group of other Portland businesses.  I have the brass plaque in memory of Edward R. Hopkins with the names of the companies that donated.  There is not a date on it. 
 
The old course was removed because it had exceeded it's useful life over 10 years ago.  We made repair after repair on it, and without replacing it, it could not be brought to a condition where it could be considered a reasonable asset.  The final decision to remove it came after 2 children were slightly injured when one of the components failed and they fell to the ground. 
 
The long range planning is to locate a skatepark in the area where the par course was and the sand volleyball courts are now.  There is not current funding for this project.  If this happens, the sand volleyball courts will be located in an area east of the lower tennis courts.  It is possible that a new par course can be tied into that project.  I have had at least one request to construct an additional sand volleyball court.
 
We are currently in the process of planning repairs to the children's playground on the north side of the park.  The embankment double slide had to be removed after it had been vandalized and a large hole was made in it.  There are other discrepancies in the playground that need to be addressed. 
 
Children have undermined the upper structure and the rubber surface around it.  This and the steep bank to the east side have caused the soft surface material to become contaminated with soil though erosion.  This makes the soft surface of woodchips compacted and unacceptable to meet playground specifications.  The upper structure will need to be removed so that we can make a series of retaining walls under it and to the east before we can replace it and the slide. 
 
The handicap accessible side walk to the upper structure and the slide need to have the ramp into the soft surface material completed.  This was not completed in the initial construction because there was not enough room for a safe fall zone for the tire swing.  In order to accomplish this, the swing and tire swing structure need to be moved about two feet to the south.  These are going to be expensive repairs and might have to be done separately.  Again, we would welcome contributions from the community.  We did a topographic survey of the playground the first week of August and Lisa Cameli our Parks Engineer is having drawings made of our planned repairs.  We hope to complete the repairs before next spring. 

Anybody got 20 Grand?

Notes from the Multnomah Neighborhood Association meeting

So the meeting last night was not particularly eventful. There's been a "sustainability study" going on in the neighborhood run by a terribly earnest professor from PSU and her students. We had an update on the outcome of their recommendations which can be boiled down to native plants (well, and Kiwi fruit) and rain barrels - more on this later. The interesting tidbit of info from the meeting had to do with our Army Reserve "base". Bet you didn't even know we had one of those did you? I'll admit that for those of you, like me, that grew up on the east coast - Oregon's lack of military in general seems a little strange.... So anyway, our very own outpost of the military-industial-complex, the Jerome F. Sears facility on Multnomah Blvd is being "surplused" by the Department of Defense.

The PDC has been designated as the agency to prepare a base reuse plan (big surpise here) and one of their representatives was at the meeting last night. Parties interested in acquiring and redeveloping this property have until December 22, 2006 to submit their proposals to PDC. The MNA is likely to make a recommendation, as we should, for two reasons: 1) The federal government will waive up to 100% of the fair market value of the property if it is redeveloped for certain community-beneficial purposes such as low income housing, police or fire and 2) this is a PRIME piece of property and any commercial developer who doesn't bid on it is an idiot - so expect a lot of interest from anyone looking for a seriously nice LARGE location for development in Southwest. I'm not a land use guy, so zoning and stuff pretty much zones me out, but if you're into that sort of thing, more info is here on PDC's housing development page. Hmm.... housing development...... If you think you want to be involved, or have your voice heard in this process, better come to next month's MNA meeting.

And yes, despite the presence of a large sign in the photo that clearly says "Jerome F. Sears", the captions on th photos on PDC's page are reversed.

Multnomah Days is coming up soon!

OK, I was going to make my post about Multnomah Days, but really - I have nothing to add to the excellent writeup already available at the Southwest Community Connection. Have I mentioned lately what a great job Jessie does covering our area?

So anyway - Multnomah Days is next weekend. No that does not mean this weekend (which is the next occuring weekend), it means the weekend of the 19th. This whole "this weekend" versus "next weekend" discussion is a long standing sematics argument in my family, which obviously has struck a chord in me, since I'm on a bit of a tirade now, clearly.

Jr. V has been asking for the entire year when the inflatable slides, etc are coming back to the Village. Finally, I will have an answer he can accept. With that said, if they're not there this year, there will be one very upset five-year-old on 35th. As for me, I think I am going to try to do the Sunday walk this year. My schedule didn't work for that last year, but it sounded like it was a good time.

Multnomah Neighborhood Association meeting tonight at 7PM! At the art center in the back corner room (follow the signs).

Oh by the way, thanks for the link Reeds in Oregon!

I'm probably the last to know this.....

The Multnomah Village Business Association has updated their website. Granted, this probably happened AGES ago, and now you all know how often I hit the MVBA's site. From the URL path, I see that they're using an open source content management system called Joomla which caught my eye since I first heard about this in an email from my domain host last week AND since I spent most of last weekend researching similar open source content systems (Typo3).

Enough nerd talk.. well, no.... Their new layout features the same creative that appears to mixed reviews on the neighborhood signage, and also (much more fittingly) on the latest neighborhood T-shirts and the excellent Village walking map. The design is the product of something called Purple Cow Creative and I'd give you some info if Purple Cow actually had a website at this address and not just a placeholder logo and email link. No, Williams College alumns, I don't know if you're the source of the name, but I assume there's likely to be a connection.

Back to the MVBA website - their content area doesn't play well with my 20" widescreen monitor, since parts of the content scale and parts don't but whatever - I'm not too good at that part either.

Scouring the Web, so you don't have to....

Cool It Down: Multnomah Village: horizontal Here's some pix of the Village posted on another 'blog. And another link from the same 'blog is a nice snippet about our neighborhood Multnomah Village Google Earth. Judging by the URL, we have "Benji Watson" to thank for these.

Random Note

I notice that Renner's has freshly repainted their neon sign. Looks good!

Community Centers Anyone?

Our lives have revolved around the neighborhood community centers this week. Jr. V has been in two camps: One in the morning at the SW Community Center, and the Multnomah Village Basketball Camp at the Multnomah Arts Center outdoor court in the evenings. He's been pretty tired at night, to be sure. The daytime camp is a "theater" camp, where all the kids have been working on a play all week. I ducked away at lunchtime yesterday to see his star turn as "Foxy Loxy" and then we all stayed for the cast party and ate cupcakes. The staff of this camp was quite delightful and Jr V will be going back again the week of the 18th. Then at night, we all trooped up to the Village for the last night of basketball camp, which involved a cookout (for at least 200 people) and free basketballs (thanks Nike!) and T-shirts for all the kids, as well as free ice cream (certificates) from Dairy Queen. Have I mentioned already what a great thing this camp was? Riversgate put on quite an event. We ended up talking to a nice couple that filled us in on the backstory of the church.

We hoofed it home to grab some chairs and a blanket and headed back up the hill again to watch "Raiders of the Lost Ark" on the court, as part of the First Friday festivities. It was fun to see that movie again on the big screen. Don Snedecor, publisher of the Multnomah Village Post, was manning the snow-cone table - demonstrating skills one wouldn't think a guy would pick up in journalism school. I was amused to note that the opening slideshow still features my lame panorama picture, but this time with a photo credit :-) The popcorn was quite good, we ate several bags. Jr. V lost interest in the movie quickly "Let's just go watch the rest of this at home..." These kids today... So Mrs. V and Jr walked home after about 45 minutes or so.

The weather was wonderful and I rather enjoyed my short walk home after 11PM, when the Village was quiet and still.

Shootin' hoops with JC...

So when we were up watching E.T. the other week, we got flyered for the Multnomah Village Basketball Camp, put on by Riversgate Church. At first I tried to dodge the guy, since Jr. V isn't quite six yet and I'm not terribly down with the whole church thing anyway, but the guy said they'd waive five-year-olds in. We went home and I forgot about it until I found another flyer in a plastic bag laying out in front of my house the following day or so. Mrs. V decided that it would be a good idea to try it out, and since I'm all about a few quiet hours between work and playtime, we packed Jr. V off to basketball camp Monday afternoon. I went to pick him up at 8, and was surprised at the huge turnout.

He's having a great time - he went back yesterday, and is going back tonight. Apparently, this is the third year that this has been put on. I must admit that other than the pure choas of dropping him off, I'm pretty pleased with his experience and how this event is being run by the numerous adults and older kids involved.

Here's some pix (these are from Tuesday night, and taken from far back 'cause I don't wanna be posting pics of people's kids on the Web) - thanks for the free evenings Riversgate!