The Multnomah Villager

I have broken the site.....

2007-03-07T21:44:00.000-08:00

The Villager is down right now, and I'm going to have to re-install some server software to bring it up again.... It may take me til the weekend, sorry...

New posts up on the Multnomah Villager

2007-01-30T14:00:00.000-08:00

Hey all -

A few new posts have gone up on the new site. I'm talking about sidewalks, neighbors, and for the last time, migration of the blog. Check it out at www.multnomahvillager.com and remember to update your bookmarks - I'm no longer posting new posts to this address, although I will keep the content available, for the benefit of the folks who have found this site via Google or Yahoo.

Snow Day!

2007-01-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

Yeah OK, everyone knows it snowed in Portland today, and as of 7PM or so, schools are closed tomorrow too.. My post about today's adventures, with pictures, is at the new site address www.multnomahvillager.com, and I'm not cross-posting it, cause of the pix, so go check it out there and update your bookmarks!

The Multnomah Outdoor Cinema returns... Um... Indoors

2007-01-13T10:26:00.000-08:00

Well, based on the success of the Outdoor Cinema this summer, and by popular demand, there will be a mid-winter ~~Outdoor~~ Indoor Cinema screening on Sunday, February 11th. It will be a mid-day matinee, should be at 2PM but I'm not sure that this time is 100% confirmed as of yet. Since it's so close to Valentine's Day, the movie day will be candy-themed with a showing of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" - yes, that's the original Gene Wilder version. It should be fun, and there's talk of combining this with a canned food drive for Neighborhood House. I'll keep you posted as details come out.

Finally! The Villager moves to it's own URL!

2007-01-07T19:47:00.000-08:00

This 'blog has moved!
The new address of the Multnomah Villager is where it should have been all along, at www.multnomahvillager.com.

I have moved the blog off of Blogspot and into Wordpress and added some new structure and category features. Please come see me there and I hope you keep reading. Thanks for all the visits, comments and everything else through the last year. I will continue to post here as well as on the new site for a month or two, but it's time to update your links. Click here to visit the new site and here is the new RSS Feed address.

O'Connors: We're not the only ones that love to eat there

2007-01-05T15:53:00.000-08:00

In waht has become a bit of a tradition lately on this 'blog, here's a link to a writeup about one of our favorite local restaurants, at Chuck Currie's Blog which in turn links to an Oregonian article from Sept 28th of this year, which I missed since Sept 28th is my birthday, and I was watching the sunrise in Joshua Tree National Park while Chuck and family were wshing O'Connor's was open for breakfast already.

Just one number away......

2007-01-01T16:11:00.000-08:00

Nice writeup on Renner's Wednesday night Bingo nights in last week's Willamette Week. Missed it? So did I, but here's a link to the article....

Give it a read, or better yet stop by Renner's this week and try it out.

Hmmm... Traffic lights?

2006-12-30T16:27:00.000-08:00

So I'm driving home from work the other day and I notice this pair of coiled wires above the intersection of Capitol Hwy & Canby & 31st, right in front of the Bento Hut and Village Rugs. See 'em? Sure looks to me like they're going to be putting in traffic lights, which might not be a bad idea considering the upcoming Multnomah Village Lofts on 31st.

That intersection of Canby and Capitol is a pain if you're coming up onto Capitol, which we do pretty much every day since it's the easierst way to get back to the Village from Fred Meyer or Safeway.

Maybe just a lighted crosswalk sign? Either would be fine. Anyone got the scoop?

Quiet Saturday Morning

2006-12-30T08:51:00.000-08:00

Walked up to the Village and grabbed some breakfast at O'Connor's, we were some of the first people out on this clear and cold morning. Looked in the window of Annie Bloom's and waved at Oscar who was considering (briefly) waking up and looking out the window, waiting for his workday to begin. Nothing special to report, just a nice quiet morning in the Village, refreshing after the rush of the Holiday season.

Wilson High School Tree Recycling

2006-12-29T16:05:00.000-08:00

I meant to post about this BEFORE Christmas, but you know how it is this time of year.... Daniel Ronan, of Students for Environmental Action at Wilson High, emailed to remind me that Wilson is recycling Christmas trees to raise money for general beautification work on the Wilson campus. They will come and pick up your tree for $10. Now, due to my lax holiday posting schedule, we've already missed our chance to reserve a time for this weekend, but you can request a pickup NEXT Saturday (that'd be the 6th) as long as you make your request no later than this Wednesday (the 3rd). Fill out an online form to reuqest a pickup!

Link to the form is here....

Thanks Daniel.

In other sanitation news, trash pickups are ONE DAY LATER both this week and next week because of the holidays. From the looks of my street, I'm one of the few that got this memo - which came in the form of a pre-recorded phone call this year.

Oh no! It was Scott!

2006-12-18T13:31:00.000-08:00

Oh man, I've been seeing this headline all day, but I just found out that the police officer who was injured last night is our former neighborhood officer Scott Westerman! He's pretty banged up.... So say a prayer or light a candle or do whatever you do to send your best wishes Scott's way... Man I don't know what to say about this - he's a great guy - sometimes you forget that police officers put it all on the line every day.

Here's a link to the article on KGW.com

And here's a link to my post about the police officers reception in October - a post that's getting some search engine action right now, I notice.

Jack Bog's Blog has also got a post about this - news travels fast when we get around to reading it...

Another set of Village Pictures

2006-12-13T13:46:00.000-08:00

by glorifing
Some nice pictures of the Village here...
Kinda makes you wish it was summer, eh?

The Unnamed "Viaduct Park"

2006-12-13T08:28:00.000-08:00

For a few months now, there has been a potential new park taking shape in the Village. I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but until this month's MNA meeting - I didn't have good images and info to clearly explain what has been going on. Plus, since there are grants being applied for and parterships being pursued, Randy requested that I not reveal too much information (you know, to my thousands of readers and all!).

Development of the park will not involve any major construction or grading of the site, since those activities require all sorts of permitting and money, but neighbors will be allowed to landscape and do some minor improvements such as replacing the decrepit stairs that lead down to the park area from Handy Andy's. A major part of the landscaping plan involves surplus bark chips from local landscape types, and of course, volunteer labor.

Randy Bonella has been the driver of this park project, but other hands are coming on board as well. A site design was recently completed by Deb Tolman of "Avant Gardens NW" and a few grants are in the process of being reviewed, applied for, and hopefully awarded.

Neighbors deciding to "reclaim" community spcaes and turning them into something we can be proud of is a concept I can totally support. I'll keep my eyes on this process and make sure to post any opportunities to help out as they arise.

All the details are available at the Multnomah Village Park Page on Google Pages.

The Red Electric: Checking in from Hillsdale

2006-12-07T10:03:00.000-08:00

This morning, I was eating a quick breakfast at Fat City (excellent as usual, although I defy you to eat one of their biscuits without a fork, since the first bite pretty much renders the thing a pile of smallish bits of unconnected biscuit-essence) while reading the SW Community Connection (again, it was the only thing handy) and I noticed that Rick Seifert, founding editor of the Connection, has started a 'blog. I made a note to check it out when I got in front of my computer.

Imagine my surprise when I found an email from Rick waiting for me in my inbox (sent last night) introducing me to his site! Synchronicity. I'm at work (Shhhh) so I can't spend time reading just now, but go on over and visit his 'blog at theredelectric.blogspot.com and see what's going on up the hill.

This just in: Flexcar anyone?

2006-12-07T09:54:00.000-08:00

From the unusually active "This Just In" department comes a tip from Brian Russell, chair (pending next week's vote) of the Multnomah Neighborhood Association:

I was walking into the Village from my side of Mult. blvd yesterday and noticed a new sign and street markings on the corner at 35th right smack dab in front of John's Market Place. There's now a reserved space for "ride share vehicles, all hours, all days" I'm assuming that means Flexcar. I suppose that means Multnomah Village is becoming more metropolitan, don't you think? thought this might be newsworthy enough to share with your readers.

Thanks, Brian, for the tip. By the way, more info about Flexcar is here.

Maplewood Day: Thanks for your support!

2006-12-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

So, I heard that Thinker Toys had a very.good.day. on Saturday, which was "Maplewood Day" up in the Village. Let me tell you, it was standing room only in the store when I was there, and the staff looked like they were having a very full day indeed. The other businesses I stopped into were hopping as well. Thanks for your support on Saturday, if you were one of the shoppers. Jr V, a (rather impatient) future customer of the Maplewood playground, appreciates your support.

Disclaimer: I have to confess that WE bought stuff at Thinker Toys on FRIDAY, before I looked at all of Jr. V's school stuff and found out about Maplewood Day. But don't worry, there will be at least 15 more fundraising opportunities presented to us before the Holiday, to be sure.

Glitzie's gets a makeover?

2006-12-04T13:29:00.000-08:00

Well, according to the sign on the door, they're remodeling. Watch your step! Although you won't trip over any furniture or fixtures, 'cause the place is completely empty to the walls! No they haven't been cleaned out by burglars, and they haven't up and left town in the middle of the night. Still, today doesn't look like a very good time for a cut....

Last First Friday Before Christmas!

2006-12-01T21:04:00.000-08:00

Well, we walked up to the Village tonight to take part in the big December First Friday festivities. The main attraction being the lighting of the Village Christmas tree by Santa himself. Here's some pictures along with the narrative:

A group of carolers was pressed right up against the glass outisde Birdie's. Note my incredible shaky-photo-in-the-dark-skillz.

Naturally, we headed straight for the toystore after Jr. V ducked into Fat City to greet several of his friends. We'd all eventually end up at the Toy Store, 'cause it's our destiny. After checking out the offerings and some presents we may have to pick up later when the recipient isn't watching our every move, we headed back outside to secure a spot over by the tree.

It's rather foggy tonight, even more so now, but the fog certainly beats the torrential rains we've had since October so we were not complaining.

Of course, we ran into Jessie from The SW Community Connection, who is at pretty much any event anywhere in our area. We strategized on good places to get a picture of the tree, which was not yet lit. Crowds built up quickly as we found a spot on the corner and she photographed a few people and interviewed Michelle from Village Beads as the excitement built up.

Santa was making his rounds (one of the kids in the caroling group was his "#1 fan", at least according to the kid, who kept trying to get Santa to hear him say it. In this picture, Mr. Claus high-fives Jr. V's friend Zev.

Jessie wondered if there would be a countdown to the lighting of the tree... The answer to that was no. With no fanfare whatsoever, the tree was off, then on!

And here's the tree after it was lit up! This is the first year that the MVBA has "done" a Christmas tree, but it seemed a very popular event, so I suppose it won't be the last. Breakfast with Santa at the Lucky Lab tomorrow morning, and don't forget to do your Christmas Shopping in the Village tomorrow, since it's Maplewood Day, where a percentage of what you spend is donated to the Maplewood Elementary Playground Fund.

Speking of Maplewood fundraisers... wanna buy some wrapping paper, or coffee, or cookie dough, or pretzel dough, or scrip, or books, or God knows what else?

Maplewood Day Tomorrow in the Village!

2006-12-01T19:50:00.000-08:00

Hey folks - sorry for the short notice, but tomorrow is "Maplewood Day" in Multnomah Village. What's this? Well, it means that a percentage of everything you spend (at participating merchants) will be donated to the playground fund! Maplewood Elementary is raising money to replace their playground equipment...

Here's what you do: Go to a participating merchant, pick out what you want and lots of it, and make sure to tell the cashier that you want your purchases to benefit Maplewood!

Here's the list of merchants:

Switch Shoes
Thinker Toys
Birdie's
Annie Bloom's Books
Indigo Traders
Jules of Morocco
Village Beads
Peggy Sunday's
Sweets, Etc.

Now that's a lot of beer....

2006-11-25T17:54:00.000-08:00

You know, I haven't been to John's Market Place in a while, since Mrs. V usually is the one to stop in there... So I drop by on Thursday morning to grab a bottle of wine, and I was floored by the sheer volume of different beers they've got in there. Now I know that John's has an incredible wine selection, and I konw that they're known for their selection of beers, but I was not prepared for the veritable MAZE of shelved beers from every conceivable point of origin. And while putting up this post I was also surprised to discover that John's has a website. You can visit the site at johnsmarketplace.com, but better yet just drop by for a bottle of something-or-other. But don't go if you're really thirsty, or you might leave broke.

Think of it as evolution in action

2006-11-22T11:53:00.000-08:00

Over the next 30 days, I am in the process of migrating this 'blog to what will be it's permanent home, at www.multnomahvillager.com. I'm not linking this yet, since the index page just redirects to this site. I will post links and updated RSS feed information when I make the switch, as well as double-posting on both sites for a while until everyone is used to the new URL (plus I don't want to wipe out all my Google seniority). You may notice some odd things, such as "housekeeping tags" and things popping up between now and then.

I'm moving the blog off of Blogger and into Wordpress. This is a good thing, but it requires me to learn CSS which is taking some time. Not all of the customizations I want to put in will be live right when I launch, but I might surprise myself.

Unless you're reading this on an RSS feed, you have probably noticed that I added Google text ads a couple weeks ago. I'm hoping to offset the hosting and domain maintenance fees with the cents (and it is cents) that I get from having these on the site. I am NOT planning to junk up the site with more ads than you currently see, and I will NOT be adding ads to the RSS feed. Technically, I'm not allowed to say things like "help a brother out and click on one or two", so I won't say aything like that, but you know what I mean....

One of the main changes is the addition of static pages for links, galleries etc. This hopefully will help the blog be a more complete resource for people that come here looking for complete info on the Village, and not just my latest ramblings.

I should be done with all of this before the 1st of the year, and perhaps before, depending on my schedule over the holidays. Thanks for reading, commenting and visiting! As Jack Bogdanski said when his 'blog turned four, "this is my best hobby ever."

The subject line is a favorite quote, from the Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle book "Oath of Fealty" that's stayed with me through the years. Man, I loved those guys' writing.

The Greatest Fat City Writeup

2006-11-21T13:55:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to the best writeup about Fat City that I have ever read. D*mn, now I'm all hungry for two-eggs-any-style....

Annie Bloom's Scores One for Decency

2006-11-19T19:14:00.000-08:00

I can't tell you how relieved I was to see on KATU tonight that Annie Bloom's Books is declining to carry the OJ Simpson book "If I Did It". Don't even get me started on what the existence of this book says about some publisher's lack of moral judgement. And that's more than enough talk about OJ in this 'blog. Thanks, Annie Blooms. The news may have characterized this as a decision based on low sales projections, but I'd like to think it's just common sense.

In other Annie Bloom's Books news, I was just reminded by an email from the Multnomah Villagers Yahoo! group (no relation) that Dr. David Suzuki is speaking tomorrow night at 7:30PM at the Multnomah Arts Center. Thanks Bernadette!

This event is sponsored by Annie Bloom's, in relation to the release of Dr. Suzuki's Autobiography (volume 2, for those of you keeping count). This event will be packed, to be sure and is $5 - you can get a ticket at Annie Bloom's. The info is on the main page of their website. This event is also sponsored by the Northwest Earth Institute.

Ha ha..

2006-11-19T13:15:00.000-08:00

I just got a site visit from Rancho Cucamonga, CA (off of Google) with the search term "Multnomah Village is Cute".

Word has apparently gotten out.

How about a picture

2006-11-17T10:15:00.000-08:00

Credit - Portland Ground: Pictures of Portland Oregon - Used by Creative Commons License

I found this picture on Portland Ground, which is a cool photoblog described as "A Photographic Landscape of Urban Oregon". It's maintained by Miles Hochstein. I'll let him describe his site, but it's definitely worth a visit.

Portland Ground is a geo-photo-documentary. Each of the 1053 images here is connected to one of the 75 odd neighborhoods or places I've visited. It's my effort to do street photography in a way that pleases me, and captures the rough edges and the beautiful sides of Portland Oregon.

Hmmm. The Lucky Lab sounds good to me too....

2006-11-16T16:59:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to a nice post about a local resident's recent trip to the Lucky Lab here in the Village.

I drove to the 'Lucky Lab West' at 7675 SW Capitol Hwy, scurried through the dark and rainy parking lot and into the brewpub. Unlike the bento and sandwich staples served at their other two locations, the Public House serves pizza. So I ordered a couple of slices and a pint, and sat down at one of the many open tables.

The Full Post is here...

The story of how I stumbled upon this post is long and convoluted, anyway, I thought it was a nice writeup so I'm linking it here.

Spring Garden Park - The Adventure Continues...

2006-11-16T09:52:00.000-08:00

So there's been some action surrounding Spring Garden park for a while (click this small photo which will expand to a larger view if you need to know where Spring Garden park is...)

On Tuesday night at the MNA meeting, Hannah Davidson made a presentation and gave us some information about future plans for this park. Basically, she communicated that Bob Schultz of Portland Parks had raised the idea of creating an "adventure park" with Spring Garden park in mind. The important part of this message is that Bob had mentioned that this might be able to happen WITHOUT putting in curbs and sidewalks, which is a very expensive proposition that also defeats the purpose of the vision of the park which is laid out as "natural open space with muted play equipment". More details about this plan can be found in Thursday's Oregonian, which is likely in the recycling by now, so here's a link to the article on Oregonlive.

I should point out (that Hannah pointed out) that Spring Garden is NOT a dog park, despite the prominent dog in this article.

Anyone who's as old as me refers to an "adventure playground" as just a regular "playground". I remember this movement the FIRST time around, in the late 70's, which was widely referred to amongst my peers as "when playgrounds got cool". Here's a snippet from Berkeley's adventure park website that lays down the info:

The concept for Adventure Playground originated in Europe after World War II. A playground designer studied children playing in the at-the-time “normal” asphalt and cement playgrounds. He discovered that the children actually preferred playing in the dirt and lumber of the post-war rubble. He realized that children had the most fun designing and building their own equipment and manipulating their environment....

Some of the pictures we were shown included things like large hollow logs, and old boats as the play structures, which immediately reminded me of the fun time Jr V had when we last visited Bend, at Harmon Park which features a large boat embedded in the play area. Sorry, I can't find a better picture of this....

As far as Spring Garden goes, a group is being formed to develop a formal plan for an Adventure Park, this is expcted to take around a year with the planning process between February and June of 2007 and fundraising (you knew that was coming) in July of 2007. So, we might expect to see an adventure park in Spring Garden park around spring 2008 barring any unforseen problems, and if all goes well.

Here are some links to various adventure park sites and resources:

Adventure Park at UC Berkeley
The very cool looking St. Kilda Adventure park, down in Oz
Huntington Beach, CA Adventure Park, with the world's longerst URL - you should see this thing
And here's an NPR story about why European-style adventure parks are "dying out" in the US due to liability issues.

I'll keep you all posted as information comes in and the project moves along. Whatever you call it, Adventure Park, Eco-playground, or just plain old "park", it sounds like the opportunity to make something cool that my son for one, will enjoy.

Coming Soon: Journeys Pub

2006-11-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

So I mentioned something about this about a month ago, but here's the deal fresh from the husband-and-wife owners, who presented their plans at the MNA meeting last night. We're getting a new pub. It's a beer & wine place, serving light food, to be located next door to Thai Herbs in teh house previously occupied by Village Beads, before they moved to the corner formerly occupied by JK Hill's. My what a complex description. The easy version - it's going into the white house on Capitol between Jacqueline's and Thai Herbs. Village Beads sign is still out front, for now.

Journeys will be a travel themed pub serving beer and wine and some food (although they will not have a grill) targeting a more "upscale" crowd then might be found, you know, down at The Ship. The inspiration for Journeys was the owners habit of taking maps and guidebooks to their favorite pubs when planning trips of their own. They are trying to design their "ideal place" for this sort of thing. Apparently, the desire is to incorporate theme nights or events that will expose the clientele to other cultures and places in the world. To include, one assumes, appropriate beers and wines. The place should seat around 26 inside, and they plan to provide tables outdoors (in the front) for a further dozen or so, similar to what Thai Herbs has.

There were some concerns voiced by the immeidate neighbor, and a few others, about whether or not the Village needs another bar. The owners seemed sympathetic to these concerns and it sounds like they've been addressed. The primary concern (other than the late-night outflow of more post-drinking-session folks walking and yes driving home) was the possibility of live music (there won't be any) and the use of the back yard for parking and/or seating. The back yard is a separate lot, and not zoned commercial. In fact the lease for Journeys doesn't include the backyard (for this reason, no doubt) so it seem like all will be well.

This sounds like a place I might enjoy visiting. I for one appreciate the owners for coming by the MNA meeting (although at Brian's request, I think) to lay out their plans and listen to the concerns of the neighbors. So I guess we can look for Journeys to open up in a few months.

Rieke Elementary School Marketing Report

2006-11-13T13:16:00.000-08:00

True, Rieke Elementary School is technically not a "Multnomah Village" school, since most Village residents (if they go to public school) go to either Markham or Maplewood. However, the proposed closure of Rieke would have an impact on our neighborhood schools, so this applies to us as well.

For those of you interested in schools, or in the future of Rieke, the PPS reorganization information site has this blurb:

Superintendent Phillips had proposed merging Rieke Elementary School in Robert Gray Middle School to create a K-8. This fall, 282 students are enrolled at Rieke, which is in the Hillsdale neighborhood. The neighborhood and school community asked Portland Public Schools for a chance to grow their enrollment by attracting more families in the neighborhood, allowing them to reach a student body closer to 400, a size the school district considers sustainable and better able to offer a well-rounded curriculum. On October 13, the Rieke community submitted a marketing plan to accomplish that goal.

Here's a link that contains a further link to a PDF of the marketing report.

In case you're not tired of elections.....

2006-11-13T11:47:00.000-08:00

Yes, tomorrow night is the Multnomah Neighborhood Association meeting, and it's that time of the year. Yes, it's the meeting at which the officers of the MNA will be nominated and voted in for the next year. Which means of course, that if you come to the meeting and talk a few friends into coming with you, it is entirely feasible that you can get yourself elected Chair! Well, maybe vice-chair, since Brian Russell continues to be an excellent Chair, I can't imagine why we wouldn't vote him in again. Want to get involved? Come by and at least meet everyone and vote, or get someone to nominate you for something. Next stop City Hall.

Friends & Neighbors!

It's time once again for another meeting of the Multnomah Neighborhood Association.

Tuesday, November 14, 7pm at the Multnomah Arts Center.

On the agenda for this month,
Captain Krick of Station 18 will be paying a visit.

Bob Antony of Journeys Pub in the old Village Beads house will be sharing his plans.

Updates on the Armory, Headwaters, and our Viaduct Park proposal

New information on Spring Garden Park

Nominations for Officers

And how you can become a professor at PSU (Interested?...)

So come join us (it's only 90 minutes) and help shape your community!

Cheers,
Brian Russell
Chair, MNA

Thanks Police!

2006-10-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

So Jr. V and I walked up to the Multnomah Arts Center last night (after a brief stop at Thinker Toys to check out the new Playmobil stuff and the Lego Star Destroyer that we both crave) to attend the Community Policing Celebration. Many folks came out to thank our former community response team and welcome in the new guys.

It was a homespun low-key gathering, as these things are, with much fun being poked at the officers, particularly Scott Westerman, who brings it on himself. There were snacks, and much to the delight of Jr. V, cake. I took a minute and introduced Jr. V to Mark Friedman, one of our new neighborhood officers. I guess I think it's important for kids to see the police in a normal setting and to get comfortable with the fact that they're just regular folks. I was glad we had the opportunity to meet and greet, since I've been meaning to introduce him to some officers for a while.

Picture by Jr. V
There were quite a few officers in house, and many familiar names buzzing about the room. I don't know if you'd call it a who's who of neighborhood association society, but it was certainly close.

This is Scott, Stephanie and Steve - our outgoing team. Thanks folks!

Outside.in

2006-10-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

So about a week ago, I noticed a URL in my site stats from outside.in. Now, you Portland people know that there's a homeless youth shelter in Portland called Outside In, which is waht I initially assumed this link was. After noticing more hits from this URl yesterday, I decided to click through and find out what the deal was. The URL in question is http://outside.in/97219. Turns out it's a Google Mashup blog aggregator based in Brooklyn, NY. I got the following info in my email later in the day.

I'm writing to let you know about a web site called outside.in that launched about an hour ago. It's a site that's aiming to capture and organize all the neighborhood-centric information on the web, drawing, in part, on the amazing work being done by local bloggers like yourself.

Our vision for the site is this: You sit at a computer and type in a street address, or a neighborhood name, or a zip code -- perhaps for your own home area, perhaps for a place you're visiting or interested in -- and within seconds the screen gives you a glimpse of all the textured, real-world issues and conversations and news unfolding in the location you've entered. Up to now, only the most connected local experts in any neighborhood could keep up with all these evolving conversations. outside.in is designed to let you see it all in seconds.

Today I see some links from another blog called The Future of Real Estatee Marketing that apparently is run by someone in or near the Village, which provides quite a nice writeup about outside.in, so go read it over there.

I have very mixed feelings about blog aggregators that place ads and make money off of other people's (mine) content, and this blog is certainly not a calculated part of the "Future of Real Estate Marketing", but it is a resource for future homebuyers who Google the Village, or so I'd like to think.

Turns out I'm part of hte "hyper-local blogger movement". Who knew?

Come by to say thanks

2006-10-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

This event is definetly worth stopping by....

We are going to be giving special recognition to former Neighborhood Response Team Officers Scott Westerman and Officer Steve Andrusko, plus Crime Prevention Specialist Stephanie Reynolds. This special crime fighting team worked together over the last several years to address crime issues and promote crime prevention strategies to solve community problems. We hope residents and business owners will attend a brief reception on Tuesday, October 24th at 7 pm at the Multnomah Center, to say thank you to these individuals and the officer that serve Southwest Portland.

Tomorrow night!

Sen. Ron Wyden Thursday afternoon at the MAC

2006-10-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

Ha! No, not the Multnomah Athletic Club, but our own MAC, the Multnomah Arts Center. Don't believe me? Show up and see him yourself.

Senator Wyden will be holding his Multnomah County Townhall in SW Portland this Thursday, Oct. 19 from 3:00 - 4:30PM.
County residents are invited to attend the community meeting in Portland to voice their questions and concerns on any issue.

It'll be in the gym, so there's plenty of room.

Random Village Bullet Points

2006-10-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

At the meeting on Tuesday, Brian mentioned something I had noticed from the street, but not investigated, which is that there is an OLCC permit application notice on the front door of the house which used to be the location of Village Beads, before their recent move. Apparently, this application is on behlf of something called "Half Full LLC" and is to result in a "beers of the world" tasting room. There was some concern about whether or not the Village needs another establishment selling alcohol. One resident voiced concern over the rear parking situation, but I pointed out that her concern would be better directed at outdoor tables, since the house has a very large backyard. If it were my beer tasting place - I'd have tables out back. Brian pointed out that the backyard of this lot is zoned residential, but I'm not sure I believe that, since Jackie's (next door) has the nursery in the backyard, wouldn't they be zoned the same?

Much hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth about the new stone facade of the Soleil day-spa thingy on the corner just as you come off of the bridge on Captol Hwy into the Village. I thought "they" were building a house behind the spa, but it turns out that the spa is expanding. Personally, I think the stone looks cool, but there are many folks who feel like it's out of place in the Village. For my part, considering how many businesses have been in that space before, it's nice to see something expanding - they must be doing well. Yes, I know Sip D'Vine used to be there, and they've apparently grown well too!

I notice there's a rug store in the advanced stages of moving in to the old Multnomah Post offices, across from the Bento Hut where there was breifly a computer business.

What is going into the Village Yoga Space? Anyone?

Oh, and for record-keeping's sake, thanks to a pickup by Jack Bog's Blog, yesterday was my single biggest traffic day in the year-and-a-half history of this 'blog. I'll admit that there is a temptation to "go political" in order to hang on to these types of numbers, but I'm sticking with my formula - still - I hope at least one or two of the new readers comes back once or twice!

And the last housekeeping item - I remain amazed at the frequency with which the Wikipedia entry for Multnomah Village leads people to this 'blog. I noticed that hits have started coming from Answers.com, which mirrors the Wikipedia content, and now includes the link to this site.

Interestingly, there's a new bit in the Wiki entry today, stating "Multnomah Village was, for a long time, home to the world's first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, which was physically located in an office there. The website has since relocated."

More like around the corner from the heart of the Village....

2006-10-11T09:08:00.000-07:00

So, several months ago, a couple of freshly-scrubbed Jr. Executive types visited the Multnomah Neighborhood Association meeting to present an "idea" being proposed for a condo development in the Village. This is located kind of diagonally across from the Multnomah Art Center, twoards the stoplight on 31st. Two older houses were to be removed to make the space. We never heard anything again. Last month, we noticed that the houses had been torn down. Last night, I noticed the above-pictured signs, up on the fence of what is now a construction site.

So much for the neighborhood review process.

Which brings me to mention an issue I have with the Neighborhood Association structure as a whole. There have been rumblings in the Portland-area media this year about how the City is trying to cut the neighborhood associations out of the already convoluted process of development, etc. This is certainly an example of that - since there's no way that a development of this size would have little to no impact on the neighborhood. It gives one the feeling that the neighborhood association is not much more than a discussion roundtable for local residents - and not the arm of local government that many people assume the NA's to be. This is not the only recent case of this sort of thing. Is there really such a thing as neighborhood-level influence on local government? I'd say that recent developments point to the answer being "no".

For now, I'll leave the politicking to Jack Bog.

The website is non-existent, just a paceholder page with no info, but for the record - it is here.

Although different companies are involved (so far as I can tell) the design looks very familiar....

Don't worry, it was just vacation....

2006-10-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

Well that and being overwhelmingly busy at work. I'll start updating again tomorrow. See you at the Neighborhood Association meeting tonight at 6:30? That or the Ballot Measures Forum if you're into the whole educated voter thing, which hopefully many people are.

Anybody know what's going in to the (not so) old Village Yoga Room space?

Welcome to the Village

2006-09-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

Our new neighbors own what I suspect is the World's Largest Dog. Welcome to the neighborhood! If you should see the World's Largest Dog walking about the village (he's a St. Bernard) his name is Jefferson.

Be alert....

2006-09-12T13:09:00.000-07:00

I just got this in my email... I'm stripping the homeowner's personal info, etc but here is the gist:

But I wanted to let you all know about some recent activity on Canby St. that reminds us all to be vigilant neighbors. Unfortunately in the house next to us police were called because of significant disturbances and ultimately we learned of the high likelihood that drugs are involved. The police are investigating and have been professional, responsive and a great comfort to us and our family. However, the situation is still unresolved. So I ask that if you see suspicious activities on Canby St (we're hust a few houses west of 35th) that you let the police know. The SW Crime Prevention Officer and guy following this most closely is Officer Mark Friedman 503-823-0234.

Among other notes, the homeowner sending this email mentions keeping your eyes open for a silver 2006 Dodge Charger which may be an Enterprise Rental Car which has not been returned.

The homeowner has positive things to say about her dealings with the Police Bureau and city operatives, particularly Maria Thi Mai, who is on Commissioner Adams' staff, but I didn't realize she was a nieghbor. Although, having types that I seem to think we may have stopped by her house last Halloween...

By the way... you do NOT want to get in a bike race against Maria.

Celebrity day at the school bus stop

2006-09-12T10:03:00.000-07:00

So, Jr. V started school at Mapelwood yesterday. He's riding the bus in the mornings. This morning, as we were alwking to the stop, Mrs. V notices her friend Shawn Levy, who writes movie reviews for the Oregonian. Here's a link to his blog at Oregonlive. Shawn's also got quite a string of books and movies to his credit, but don't be fooled by IMDB, there are TWO Shawn Levy's in the world. "Our" Shawn has lived in several houses in the Village over the years, all just a few blocks from us, while maintaining what has appeared to be a quite successful writing career.

Multnomah Village Yahoo! Group

2006-08-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-08-19T17:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-18T13:43:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-16T10:12:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-15T16:15:00.000-07:00

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"

2006-08-14T19:08:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-11T15:56:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-08-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-08-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-09T23:39:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-08-08T11:08:00.000-07:00

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.....

2006-08-07T20:25:00.000-07:00

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....

2006-08-06T21:52:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

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

Community Centers Anyone?

2006-08-05T16:56:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-08-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

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!

A hot night at the M.O.C.

2006-07-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

So Jr. V and I went up to the Village last week to see a piece of E.T. at the Outdoor Cinema. He had never seen it before, I think maybe I've seen it twice, but it's been years. It was not as crowded this time, likely due to the opressive heat, although after it got dark, it felt pretty good out there. The A/V setup is great, the sound was good and the movie was pretty enjoyable after all this time. Although I was slightly annoyed to notice that this is the "new" version of E.T. that has been all politically corrected: The guns have been removed from the "hunters" in the openng sequence and E.T. is computer-animated in several of the scenes. I do not approve of this sort of after-the-fact tweaking of movies and the pandering nature of removing the guns annoys me. Onward....

Anyway, we amde a beeline for the concession table once we determined that they were selling snow cones! Here's a note - when you are offering blue bubblegum as a flavor, it is not necessary to ask either me or Jr. V which flavor we want. The ultimate superiority of blue bubblegum snow cone flavoring cannot be ignored. We spent a few bucks at the concession stand, although technically we owe the MNA a dollar since they would not let Jr. V pay for his popcorn, convinced he had already bought a bag and was entitled to a free refill. He tried to pay, but in the end brought me back my dollar. Stickin' it to the Man!

I note with amusement that my lamely stitched panorama photo was grabbed off this site and incorporated into the pre-movie slideshow. Which is fine and all, but how 'bout a photo credit next time, eh?

We'll be up there on the 4th for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and I'll hang around to help clean up. This is a fun event. If you go, make sure to corner one of the organizers, particularly Jessica, and thank them for all their hard work.

Cookies for breakfast?!

2006-07-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

You know those cookies at Village Coffee? The big, frosted, pastel-colored ones?
Super.Good.
Especially with a black-as-night french roast.

Hydropark does not equal waterslide......

2006-07-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

I can understand your frustration, especially this weekend, upon learning that the word "hydropark" does mean "park that contains water features, such as slides". In fact, in this case it means a park that is operated by the water bureau and contains a huge green water tank. Here's a quick aerial photo (thanks, Google Maps) to show you basically where this new park is:

As mentioned on Tuesday on the Water Bureau's blog the Multnomah Neighborhood Association had the July meeting at this new park. It's open and shady, and paths are being put in, it's a nice little oasis. One that, in the interest of full disclosure, is already drawing the odd group of "teenagers" after dark, but what are ya gonna do?

During the meeting, Brian Russell, chairman of the MNA, signed into effect our new revised bylaws, making the Neighborhood Association all compliant and stuff, here's a blurry pic of the action, with Erik witnessing...

Here's the rest of the hot meeting action!

And a few pictures of the park.

The paths are in progress, there will be a picnic table and a bench or two added, although we pretty much agreed that pushing for a mural on the tank might be a little much, just now. Of course, if it was up to me, I'd slap climbing holds up along the side of that bad boy, but that's about as likely to happen as a cold front this weekend.

Texas Tank Hydropark info page on Portland Online

Oh, don't forget about the movie tomorrow night! It's E.T. by the way - the movie titles have to be kind of word-of-mouth, since it costs serious additional licensing fees to advertise using the titles of the movies. Seriously, don't get me started about licensing Hollywood films. Or maybe you should. Buy me a scotch at O'Connor's sometime and ask me about "King Kong".

First Friday and the livin' is easy...

2006-07-07T21:54:00.000-07:00

Well, the weather and my schedule have finally cooperated to give us a nice First Friday in the Village. Jr. V's at a sleepover (we'll see how long that lasts) so for the first time in recent memory, I could go to First Friday and NOT go to the toy store (sorry, Thinker Toys, it's only a matter of time....) In fact I started out at Sip D'Vine, where I picked up what hopefully will be a nice bottle of red as a thank you gift for a co-worker who has spent all day saving my behind. Canadian, eh? well, not so long ago I had never heard of Chilean wine either, and Aussie wines were merely the stuff of Monty Python parody, so we'll give this Canuck Merlot the benefit of the doubt.

There's music (and found object art) all over tonight.. There's flamenco-ish guitar is the wine store, a pedal steel outside Village Beads, the two young violinists (Ok one was probably a viola) outside Acapulco's and Jazz coming out of O'Connors. I dropped into Annie Bloom's to pick up a (trade paperback, yay!) copy of 1776 for my Dad's birthday, which was ages ago... and then walked up to see how the outdoor cinema was looking.

Despite this clumsily patched-together panorama shot, it was looking pretty good! As I suspected, they had the list of upcoming movies there (see below) and if you hurry - you can catch the tail end of "Shrek". There's quite a turnout, and perfect weather - considering it was like 40 degrees last night. The website is multnomahoutdoorcinema.org, by the way.

The movie list is as follows:

Friday July 7th - Shrek
Friday, July 21st - E.T.
Friday, August 4th - Raiders of the Lost Ark (Jr. V and I will definitely be at this one
Saturday, August 19th - TBA (they're taking votes)

Mrs. V will be happy that I voted for "Babe" - the Citizen Kane of talking pig movies, but it looks like Star Wars is making a strong running - this I'd be Ok with of course.

I ahve to give props to Riversgate Church who has made a generous donation of the use of their A/V setup for the outdoor cinema. Say what you will about these new-style churches, and I ahve, but this is a seriously generous thing. Rental of hard-core A/V projection equipment doesn't come cheap. I'm a video/interactive producer in "real life" and I'm painfully familiar with these costs. Thanks!

A nice evening for all, it appears.

....and up jump de Devil!

2006-07-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

So Mrs. V is on her morning walk with one of our neighbors the other day, when this neighbor wonders aloud if Mrs. V has looked at the newly launched Oregon Sex Offenders Registry and done a search for our neighborhood. Turns out that the neighbor did, and got two hits.

One of which is almost quite literally right next door.

So we checked it out and sure enough, there's the guy, with a rap sheet that does not sit too well with the parents of a five year old child. Not too happy about this development. I've never had any problems with this person, in fact I haven't really had any interaction with them at all, so I'd like to just file this fact away, but you can't really do that can you?

It just goes to show that knowing your neighbors has its ups and its downs. You guys might want to check that site out too, the link is above.

A few notes..

2006-07-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

Well, we've had a bit of a comment exposion the last several days - which is good since at least someone has been posting to this dusty 'blog! I'm afraid my work schedule this summer has not left as much time as I would like for wandering about and posting about it. Things have been happening though.

I appreciate all your comments, and glad you enjoy reading the 'blog. Oh, and I'm not as anonymous as I'd like to believe. I've said it before, but for the new people... The "anonymous" thing is not really driven by anything more than my initial doubts about whether or not this 'blog would be something I could actually maintain, and whether or not it would attract any visitors. Plus, I don't really want to be "that guy who writes the Village 'blog" when I'm walking around. I prefer to experience our neighborhood just like I always have. Google takes care of bringing visitors here quite nicely considering I've done no "search engine optimization" or marketing of this blog, and the regular readers that I DO have are good about sharing comments etc. So it's been good.

I guess this would be a good time to point out that I missed the one-year anniversary of the Multnomah Villager, since I posted the very first post back on June 25th of 2005. I've been online journaling since 2001 but this was my first experiment with what I consider to be an actual 'blog - although I still dislike that term!

You may get more than one post today. But first...

Don't forget that tomorrow night is not only "First Friday" but also the first night of the Multnomah Outdoor Cinema! Starts around 9, and NO I don't know what movie they'll be showing, and so far as I can tell, niether does anyone else... One assumes there will be a list of titles for the four week run of M.O.C. available at Friday night's show. Seriously though, everyone has worked very hard to get this put together and it should be a fun event. Might want to bring a blanket though, since it looks as if "real" Oregon summer weather is back with us.

Oh and yes, Tamara, I do probably need a cut in another week or two. How's your arm?

So are YOU Multnomah People?

2006-06-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

A recent comment from Mouseblog alerts me to the following post, and I quote:

Overheard tonight in the Starbucks in Multnomah Village: “Well, we were Multnomah People before there were Multnomah People.”

The full post is here...

Now I don't want to start some kind of comment flame war, but there's a case to be made that real "Multnomah People" would have been at Village Coffee...

Thanks for the link!

We're number 890!

2006-06-15T09:09:00.000-07:00

Well, OK - it doesn't have the same poetic cachet of "we're number one" but still something to be proud of. Our local High School, Wilson High, was just "ranked" by Newsweek...

Newsweek recently released an update to its annual list of the Best High Schools in the US, placing Wilson at number 890 among all public high schools in the country for 2005. The rankings are based on the number of students taking Advanced Placement (AP) exams, which help prepare students for success in college. This prestigious ranking puts Wilson in the top 1,000 public high schools in the U.S. [Wilson #890, Lake Oswego #918; Westview #1079; and Lincoln #1091.

That quote came to me by way of my email, by way of Wilson's newsletter. Great news - keep it up Wilson!

Movies in the Village This Summer

2006-06-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

Multnomah Outdoor Cinema
Presented by the Multnomah Neighborhood Assocaition & Southwest Neighborhoods Inc.

Community Entertainment and Fun For All!
Summer 2006 at the Multnomah Art Center

Friday, July 7th
Friday, July 21st
Friday, August 4th
Saturday, August 19th

Admission: FREE
(Donations accepted at the gate)

All films begin approximately at 9:00 PM
Gates open at 8:15 PM
Please bring a blanket, pillow or low lying camping chair.

For more info: multnomahoutdoorcinema at yahoo dot com

Names of the particular movies that will be shown are still TBA. Stay Tuned. The films will be shown on the covered basketball courts beside the Art Center

A great day to eat outside

2006-05-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

....or to type this outside on my laptop, as it were. I noticed that Thai Herbs (7779 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, 97219 - (503) 246-1382) has added several outside tables, complete with large umbrellas (for the SUN, non-Oregon people, take note). If you're going there tonight, better hurry since they are already starting to fill up. This is good, since the only real outdoor eating venue other than the small deck at O'Connors is the perpetually crowded picnic-table area at the Lucky Lab, which is a little high-traffic.

Oh wait! Sorry, I forgot the deck at the Bento Hut. Man, I gotta get up there and get something to eat - their fresh menu since they re-opened has been looking very tempting indeed. I only wish that I was in the Village at lunchtime, since Jr. V isn't really a Bento Hut kind of kid. Their deck looks very nice, although it seems like it might get kind of hot.. Hey, why don't I reserve judgement until I've gone there, eh?

This afternoon, however, I am not leaving my backyard. Even though I live right on 35th, it always amazes me how quiet it can be out here sometimes, at 6:45 PM not ten or fifteen minutes from downtown. One of the prime attractions of living in this area to be sure.

Nice way to start the day

2006-05-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

So we walked up the hill Sunday morning to eat breakfast at O'Connor's for Mothers' Day. We ended up out on the deck, which at first seemed like it might be too cold but in the end was just right. Breakfast was good as usual, I had my regular 2x2x2 (french toast, bacon and eggs over well) and Mrs. V has some sort of scramble that provided an additional meal later on. We walked down the main drag, noticed the LeMeitour has freshened their exterior paint - it looks very nice - and wondered again why I have never gone in there. I've always been sort of intimidated by that place - for no rational reason - I mean, I'm from New York City. I know from snooty art galleries. It's not even that I think they're snooty - just for some reason I've never topped in. I'll have to remedy that on the next First Friday. Being a big fan of the "illuminists" and the Hudson River School of painting, the sort of works they have are likely to be right up my alley.

Random Notes

2006-05-12T20:09:00.000-07:00

There is a "For Sale" sign out in front of Village Yoga.

Down the street a bit - we have a computer business. According to the small URL on the hours sign, this is Homebound Tech but it is unclear from their website if this is a new location, or a re-location. They specialize in custom PC builds, training, consulting, installation... that sort of thing. Looks like a decent place to support

The Hill's Antiques location is under renovation, preparing to be the new home of Village Beads, which we've posted about a few times. This should be a colorful anchor to the corner. The large windows and easy to get to location should result in a big boost in business for Michelle, hopefully. I wonder what's going to go into their old location (the house to the left of Jacqueline's Found and Fabulous) when they move? Oh, June 2nd is the date. First Friday of course!

Custer Park is repaired just in time for spring. Despite our fears when we discovered the renovation signs last winter, they replaced the swings with new ones and even (shock!) left the merry-go-round (replaced) with a padded "landing area" for the kids who inevitably at some point in their lives will get their legs stuck and get drug around in circles. This is an important rite of passage for a kid, so it's good they didn't replace it with something safer, and less fun.

However, as of my last visit, the small slide at Gabriel Park still had not been repaired. Has this been fixed yet? We'll have to walk over tomorrow and find out

Speaking of Gabriel Park - sure enough, the old wood-and-steel fitness area next to the volleyball courts is gone completely now. Perhaps they are going to expand the volleyball courts?

There's talk of a possible outdoor film festical this summer, in the middle of the Village! This is an event that this blogger will support, if it continues to pan out.

And lastly, and semi-related due to the projected (no pun intended) location for the aforementioned film festival - that long-talked-about "four story building" that caused all the controversy a couple years back? Rumour has it that construction is finally about to begin. I'll believe that when I see it.

Another Village webpage

2006-05-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

So I've been alerted to the Multnomah Neighborhood page on a site called Portland Neighborhoods dot com which bills itself as being written by "a couple of local girls", but has the feeling of a real estate sponsored site to it. Even so, there's a good collection of links on there, and a few nice pictures.

Knight Court

2006-05-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

So Jr. V and I were headed home last night when we spotted the SCA (or some such group, it might not have been the actual SCA) having combat practice on the basketball court beside the Multnomah Art Center. As you know, it's hard to keep a 5-1/2 year old away from a bunch of armored, battling knights (same goes for his nerdly Dad), so we walked over to hang out on the playground for a while and catch all the soft-sword action.

Ah, apparently this is the "real" SCA. This was the Three Mountains Armored Combat Practice. More information about the local "Barony" of the SCA is Here. General information about the Society For Creatve Anachronism can be found at SCA.org or in the Wikipedia entry for the SCA.

Jr. V was fascinated by the real armor, and the swords. And enjoyed clambering around on the play structure while these fellows (and they were ALL fellows - athough there were a couple of women on the sidelines) battle it out. We've seen these folks before - there seem to be two schools: one which uses padded swords and lots of armor and painted shields, and then a smaller group that uses metal fencing sabers and small metal shields.

This group is much more serious about "proper" combat than the larger, less authentically costumed gangs of sword fighters that pop up in Gabriel Park on a fairly regular basis during the non-rainy season. the Gabriel Park goup is more along the lines of the "bopper battles" that I may or may not have been involved in back in the 80's ... you know, if I had been in the Dungeons & Dragons club, which is certainly something I won't admit to on THIS 'blog.

All in all, the Village seems to be a locus of local swordfight simulation action!

Signs of the Times

2006-04-20T14:01:00.000-07:00

I just got this comment in my inbox...

hello! glad someone is blogging about our village - i thought i'd have to start one if i didn't find yours.
here's a thought i'm throwing out for possible blog topic - the new village signs. (you know, the old one is the one on your page) the new one is, um, in my opinion, not an improvement. just wondered what others thought.
cheers

Which is funny, since I was thinking last night that I should post on this topic, as I drove down Capitol from Vermont and saw that they had replaced the sign there as well. I assume that all of them are done by now. As our friendly commenter points out, I have the old one as my icon - up there to the right - and I rather prefer the old signs.

I noticed this design make its debut on the T-Shirts that have popped up in the windows of various neighborhood businesses, likely a project of the Multnomah Village Business Association, although I don't know this for a fact. I kind of like the design on a T-Shirt, but not so much on the signs.

For my part, here's why:

The signs are flat paintings, not the much cooler looking routed wood signs

The design seems overly playful for a neighborghod sign

I'm not crazy about the colors, but that's just me

So in answer to this email - yes, I have considered blogging about the new signs. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Depends on how you define "celebrate"....

2006-04-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

Celebrate Earth Day at Gabriel Park

Join the Friends of Vermont Creek, Portland Parks & Recreation, the Bureau of Environmental Services, and SOLV as we remove invasive ivy in Gabriel Park.

Saturday, April 22
9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Meet at the tennis courts in Gabriel Park
SW 45th & Nevada

Register at SOLV.org's website
All ages welcome! Gloves, tools and training provided. Wear sturdy shoes and dress for the weather.
For more information contact colleenm@bes.ci.portland.or.us or 503-823-5326.

Snow yeah......

2006-03-09T10:59:00.000-08:00

So Jr. V and I got up early and bundled up and headed over to Gabriel Park, since it snowed last night! Taking all the weather people totally by surpruse, we got like 3 inches at our house. Jr V and I got a few runs in before I had to head into the office and grab my computer. We had the park pretty much to ourselves, except for a rather startled corgi who didn't expect two people to be barrelling down the hills at him at this early hour.

And coming back home from the office, I notice a small barbershop has opened next to the Veggie Restaurant on 35th. How long has that been there?

Tamara chips in...

Oh, that barber shop has been there for at least 70 yrs. but I guess you missed it. Its run by the son of the original barber who I guess has pressed some scissors in the cement somewhere near the store. Ask ty at thinker toys I think he knows where.

Yeah, it's true, I have NEVER noticed that little shop until today. Amazing!

And why are they knocking out the side walls of Grand Central - are thye putting in a drive through?

Time to get out and investigate.

The New Building

2006-03-07T08:31:00.000-08:00

So Tamara at Fusion Cut and Color, who is getting to be quite a regular contributor & reader of this 'blog, sent me this picture. This, as you may know is the "new building" that has recently opened on the corner of Capitol and 36th. It houses Switch Shoes, several artists in small working spaces on the upper floor, and is the new home of the Multnomah Village Post, although I have not seen the Post's actual location yet - but they're in there.... The owner/developer of the building (whose family has owned the property for many years) was at the last neighborhood association meeting and mentioned something that you may notice, which is that the left hand space has been painted red to evoke the old "little red building" that once occupied (no more than 200 square feet of...) part of the block. According to him, that space will house a gift store, once the operator figures out what kind of gift shop the Village can support. I'll be interested to see what that turns out to be, since we seem pretty well served in that department at this time. Still, it will be nice to have new businesses on the street!

Thanks for the picture, Tamara. I can't come see you for a couple of weeks or you'll find out that I snuck into a SuperCuts for a quickie while I was standing on line at the DMV last week....

Picture by Tamara at Fusion Cut and Color, which is right across the street.

The First Friday March

2006-03-04T14:16:00.000-08:00

Well, Friday night found me, Jr. V, Mrs. V and Mrs. V's mom wandering up the hill to First Friday. Jr. V and grandma went first, headed straight for the toy store and Mrs. V and I walked up 36th and turned down the hill into the Village. Just in time for some illegal parking drama with the plice on the scene. We stopped into Switch Shoes, which is now open and perused their colorful and funky collection of women's footwear and accessories with several other folks.

Then we wandered down the bloack to find out where the rest of the family was, it was no surprise to find Jr V and Grandma at Thinker Toys, we checked out the newest Playmobil stuff and then moved on out. Headed across the street to Village Beads and browsed a bit - Mrs. V was intrigues by their class schedule - since Village Beads doesn't have a website - I'm liable to post this later. For some reason I have a weakness for bead stores, as well as open aire fish markets, but there you are.

We walked back towards the main drag, headed for the candy store but ducked into Pagenwood to poke through all the antiques. Jr V found some colorful headgear....

I was thrilled to discover a full four-bottle carrier from the old Senn's Drive-In Dairy, which if you've been around long enough, you may remember. Man, my grandparents got ALL their milk from Senn's. I remember going to the one on Powell, but mostly the one out in Milwaukie on the way to Te-Bo's. They had GREAT ice cream. I may go back and buy those bottles...

Anyway, we popped back out and walked down to Sweets to get a candy or two. The Village seemed quieter than usual on First Friday, suprising really, considering that this is the first DRY First Friday we've had in who knows how long. We all selected a few candies and munched 'em up. Sweets has a great collection of hard-to-find and nostalgic stuff. For you Canadian candy fans, they've got Violet Crumbles and Coffee Crisp. For us old-schoolers there's wax lips, Necco's, etc. For the REALLY old-schoolers, they've even got horehounds, which I will NEVER understand. I think my Dad's attraction to horehounds was largely due to the fact the me and my brother wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole. I was pleased to discover maple sugar, which I crave leftover from a New England childhood.

Stopped into Topanien, and kept our shopping spree going. Yes, we were buying odds and ends the whole time.

Then Annie Bloom's where Jr. V had me read him a book that Mrs. V announced was the SAME book he had just wanted read to him the last time they were there, just a day or so before. Conveniently for him, it was on sale, and now it's upstairs.

And that was enough. Nice evening. Quiet on the streets, but that was nice too.

Katrina Relief Event at Multnomah Arts Center, Sat March 11th

2006-02-27T15:46:00.000-08:00

New Orleans (Still) Needs Your HELP!

Informational fund raising event to benefit Emergency Communities' "Made with Love Café and Grill": A grass-roots relief kitchen serving the hurricane victims in Arabi, Louisiana.

Featuring:

"After Katrina: Rebuilding St. Bernard Parish" Short Documentary Film by Adam Finberg

Live Music

Slide Show

Photography

Silent Auction

Volunteer Testimonials

Saturday, March 11th
5:00-7:00 pm
Multnomah Arts Center
7688 SW Capitol Hwy

Contact: valisamay at yahoo or Robert Gardner at Linfield
for more information about Emergency Communities:
Emergency Communities dot org website

JK Hills Antiques calling it quits

2006-02-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Oh man, I'm driving home last night and was surprised to see a "Going out of Business" sign on JK Hills Antiques! After 29 years! This place has been a cornerstone of the Village ever since I've lived in Portland. They're the white sort of triangular building right on the corner of 35th and Capitol, next to Renner's, with the nice green fence.

About that fence... Mrs. V and I were walking through the village one very snowy day back in '98 or '99 (was that the year it snowed on Christmas Eve?) and were crossing the street from the Acapulco's side toward JK Hills just in time to watch a bus fail to negotiate the corner onto Troy and slide through the OLD fence. Lucky they stopped before ending up on the sidewalk.

The "new" fence looks much better. It has proven to be bus-proof so far.

I've been into JK Hills a few times, although I am not really an "antique" type. They have, or had, and excellent selection of Beleek china, which my mother is really into. I better drop in before they close and see if there are any choice deals.

Wow - that's going to leave a big empty space!

Coming back to life

2006-02-08T13:16:00.000-08:00

My the sunshine was a welcome change yesterday... The main reason for the scandalous lack of posts lately is the fact that I've practically not left the house since.... well, Christmas Eve. Our usual park visits and walks have been on hold until the weather gets less sucky. So I for one was pleased to see the sun. Of course I need to cut the grass now....

On Sunday we all went on a walk over to the Post Office to drop some cards in the mail, and then headed back up towards the Village. For some reason, I decided that I wanted to walk down the dirt-and-gravel portion of 37th(?) and down the "whole" Village main drag past the white house where Sip D'Vine used to be and the new building is now going up.

We got the the intersection of 37th and that little spur of Capitol that runs under the Bridge to Mulnomah Blvd just in time to see somebody's nice newish Porsche Cayenne get T-boned by someone coming down Multnomah, who clearly was not expecting them to pull out just then. Jr. V announced that he had never seen a real crash before. Many folks went out to attend to the participants, so we kept our distance. I hope no one was hurt - it was a rtaher hard crash and the airbags in the Cayenne deployed. That road is very dangerous. Pay close attention is you're using that little "shortcut" to get down to Multnomah. For our part, we always head to the signal by the Post Office.

We passed the new building and noticed a sign up announcing the impending opening of the shoe store I've mentioned a couple of times, Switch Shoes. The link points to their very pink website.

Oh by the way, I've been a regular at the Multnomak Neighborhood Association meetings since the summer. But this month's meeting, on Valentine's Day? Yeah, I'll be bailing on that one. I can think of maybe one or two things slightly more romantic than discussing traffic lights and drainage on that particular day.

Call me a slacker.

Clearly, I haven't been buying enough Star Wars stuff....

2006-01-21T17:36:00.000-08:00

I just drove past Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and noticed a "going out of business sale" sign. That's too bad - that quirky store was right up my alley. Although it's certainly off the beaten path, which must have been a factor in it's apparent upcoming demise. If you haven't stopped in lately, and apparently, we all haven't - you should stop in soon, and buy something. He gave it a good shot.

Back in the land of the short-haired

2006-01-20T12:48:00.000-08:00

Yes, well the hair is short again now, thanks to Tamara at Fusion Cut and Color. Despite my ongoing infatuation with Barb at Vis a Vis, over at Bertha Station, I pretty much had to stop into to Fusion this time, since we've been exchanging some emails lately, and also, they could get me in. Great haircut as always, and a good conversation after I "outted" myself as the Villager to Tamara.

Hopefully she wasn't expecting me to be dashing and mysterious.

One tidbit from our conversation is that the new shoestore that has been getting local newspaper press lately is going into the new building across from Fusion, which I have been referring to as the Multnomah Village Post World Headquarters (TM), since they will be there also. This subject led us to wonder what ever happened to that four-story building that was going to occupy the empty space along the Village main drag? Anyone?

Ok well, thanks Tamara! your cut was well-reviewed by Mrs. V. See you again sometime...

The neighborhood school

2006-01-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

So, was I pointed out in my previous post, Jr. V will be starting kindergarten next fall. He'll be going to Maplewood Elementary School after all. I say this since there had been much discussion in our house recently regarding which school option we should choose. It's no so simple as just sending the kid to the local school anymore... But wait.. it is!

It's a good thing he's going at all, since I randomly went to Maplewood's site just after the new year to get some general information about the school and found out that sign up began Friday the 13th! Who knew?! And it's a good thing we called friday too, since we needed a full-day slot and they're probably all full by now.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Mrs. V, Jr. V and I went on down to the Convention Center last week for the Schools Celebration, which is pretty much a trade show for all the local schools to display their info. Maplewood was the first thing we saw when we walked in the door, and as luck would have it, the booth was being manned (what's the opposite? Personned? Womanned? I'm using manned - sue me.) by the full-day kindergarten teacher! We had such a nice conversation with her that we made our decision immediately. So that's where Jr. V will be in the fall.

The principal of Maplewood keeps a 'blog too, well anyway the Principal's Notes are posted online at http://maplewoodprincipal.blogspot.com

Now I just need to find out where this school is... I hear they have one of those Lego robotics teams, and they're good.

I promise this isn't some local government 'blog....

2006-01-16T15:39:00.000-08:00

The neighborhood association meeting was still kind of angsty the other night. It must be the rain. Commissioner Dan Saltzman was the special guest. He was OK, although not as confidence-inspiring as Sam Adams. Dan seems very much like a politician. I saw him the next night at the Portland Schools Celebration at the Convention Center also, which I note since he's the ONLY local politician we saw there (that's a good thing. That he was there, that is.... Oh nevermind).

He led with the police/fire retirement fund issue, which was not a big surprise. The rest of the talk was not really doing anything for me - so I'm not going to recount it here. I'm sure Dan's a fine guy - it wasn't just him, perhaps it was the meeting as a whole. Last month was sort of the same.

The one interesting, and cool thing is that all the officers of the neighborhood association seem to be around my age or younger(!), which is a refreshing surprise.

Depsite this recent ennui, I've managed to volunteer to be the neighborhood association's representative on the newly formed SWNI schools committee. I have NO IDEA what our neighborhood association's priorities will be surrounding school issues, but I think it's time I found out, since Jr. V is already signed up for kindergarten at Maplewood in the fall.

We did meet his future kindergarten teacher at the Schools Celebration who was delightful. So convenient being right in fron of the door. And us with our future kindergartner in tow!

First school's committee meeting is this Thursday. Film at 11.

Commissioner Sam Walks the Beat

2006-01-12T13:04:00.000-08:00

Brief article on Commissioner Sam Adams walkabout in the Village is online here, although it's not much reading. The important thing is the followup. This walkabout took place after he visited with the Neighborhood Association at the December meeting.

Neighborhood Association Meeting Tonight

2006-01-10T16:36:00.000-08:00

Yep, I've been pretty inactive for the last couple of weeks. At first I thought it was the holidays, but now I realize that it's the weather. The rain has been so relentless that I haven't really gotten out of the house. We spent most of the week between Christmas and New Year's at home, in the house, dreaming of going to the park....

Doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon.

Anyway, the MNA meeting is tonight at 7PM. Commissioner Dan Saltzman is going to be there, which should be interesting, since he's been much in the news lately. Jack Bog speculates about his political future in this post.

Last month's meeting was rather contentious. Several cranky interchanges and a few almost confrontational moments as the discussion ranged around various topics. In fact, last month's meeting pretty much embodied the reasons I have not been involved in the nieghborhood assocation prior to starting this 'blog. There's only so much property zoning variance applications and discussions of sidewalks ten years down the road that one guy can take.

Despite this - I'll be representing tonight. I was thinking of "outting" myself, but since I haven't been updating lately, perhaps that's not such a great idea.

Got some new things in the Village: the vegetarian restaurant is open, swingset has been replaced at Custer Park but not operational yet, coin store (which is also one of those eBay drop places) is open, we're getting a shoe store, the Village Post is soon going to move into their new "World Headquarters" in that new large building across from Fusion Cut & Color, etc.

See ya tonight maybe. I'll be there - come up and kick me in the behind so I start updating this thing....

I love me some Fat City

2005-11-29T10:25:00.000-08:00

Stopped in to Fat City this morning for a quick breakfast. Fat City is bar far my favorite place to east breakfast in the Village. I am genetically drawn to these types of places, where you can sit at the counter (which I don't actually like to do) and listen to a bunch of old guys talk about whatever it is old guys at diners talk about, and have two eggs any style.

I especially like the fact that you can have pancakes rather than hash browns with your breakfast and even better yet, they let me swap out for french toast! I am decidedly lowbrow in my breakfast tastes, but very particular at the same time.

Fat City is the kind of place that has a line outside the door on weekend mornings, although it is not as backed up as Marco's. It's small, and you need to get there early, particularly on the weekend, if you want a choice of seating. The walls are covered with old road signs, license plates and various ephemera. As well as really well-done paintings of the staff.

One thing that always amuses me is the laminated placemats, which you sued to see lot more back in the day, they're maps of oregon that have little cartoons and facts about the different areas of the state. You can buy them for $2.50 each (just in time for Christmas!)

Oh yeah, no posting about Fat City would be complete without making the required mention of that time back in 1987 when then-mayor Bud Clark fired Police Chief Jim Davis over breakfast by saying "read my lips, you're fired." There. I've posted about it now, you all knew it was coming eventually. If you're a Portland history buff, you can sit in the Mayor's booth (there's a small plaque) and read the newspaper article about this famous historical event that put Multnomah Village on the map, way back when.

I can't come out and play.... I have to practice my violin...

2005-11-28T10:36:00.000-08:00

Remember back in the day, when TV shows and movies used to show some sad kid inside, practicing his violin while all the other kids played outside? Well, I do. I don't play violin, but in case you think I'm making fun of music students, I was in the band for like 6 years and took piano lessons most of my growing up life. Not that I skipped a lot of playtime to practice, but I understand...

If violin's your thing - you can learn how to play in the Village, at Eliason Violin School, which I drove by yesterday and then noticed their ad on Craigslist this morning. Here's a link to the ad. Don't lose your rosin.

VIOLIN LESSON OPENINGS IN MULTNOMAH VILLAGE

Rocky Benevento

2005-11-27T18:17:00.000-08:00

Tonight as I was walking my loop around Gabriel Park, I passed the baseball field for like to two thousandth time. "Rocky Benevento Field". For some reason, tonight I decided that maybe I should find out who Rocky Benvento is or was, since I see his name all the time. Bear with me if "everybody knows this", since I'm not a baseball fan, these things can get past me. So - for those of you who have or are yet to see the sign - here is Rocky Benevento.

Rocky is a member of the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, inducted in 1993 under the "Special Contribution to Sports" category. He shares space in this category with Phil Knight, Joe Loprinzi and the Pendelton Round-Up, among others.

Rocky was the groundskeeper at the Multnomah Stadium during the heyday of Portland minor league ball in the late 50's. Here's an excerpt from an article by Portland Jazz Musician Tom Grant about Rocky...

But when it did rain during or prior to game time, this was the special province of Rocky Benevento. Rocky was the diminutive groundskeeper (they called him “park superintendent”) for the Beavers and another fan favorite. He was all business in his starched white coveralls with the bright red “P” on it, rooting around the infield lovingly maintaining the natural turf that had been brought over from Vaughn Street. Rocky had been a friend of my uncle Smokey (Harry “Smokey” Rodinsky) who’s company, Lewis Bros. Meats, had supplied the franks and burgers to the Beavers. Because of that connection, I had a supply of autographed team baseballs, photos and occasional face to face meetings with team heroes.

This page on PGE Park's history features a picture of Rocky moving the turf between stadiums.

There's not much else available online. There are references to an obituary in the Oregonian dated 1969.

So that's who the field is named after.

Come to the Village Next Weekend!

2005-11-27T11:34:00.000-08:00

Next month's (next week's) First Friday (December 2nd) kicks off the holiday season in Multnomah Village with many of the retailers and other businesses adding special holiday themed events to the usual slate of First Friday revels. There's posters about this up around town, and the schedule's printed in the Connection. I'm going to quote their version and post this info for those of you who may not get this paper or see one of the posters before Friday. Note that I'm not typing everyone's address since once you're in the Village you can pretty much find all these people.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2nd
5-9PM unless noted
Horse-drawn Carriage Rides 6-8PM. Load at Key Bank, 35th and Capitol Hwy. Donations accepted.

The Savory Chefs offer tasty treats for the holidays, Sip d'Vine

Watercolors by Ania Kocerek-Williams. Reception at Beyond Borders, continues Saturday.

Trunk Show of custom jewelry by Sue Huston at Village Frame & Gallery, 2-9 PM, continues Saturday 10AM - 4PM

Mediterranean Food & Turkish Coffee samples, live music and door prizes 6-9PM at Indigo Traders. Holiday sweets continue Saturday

Open house with refreshments, door prizes and face painting for children at Fusion Cut and Color Salon, continues Saturday

Enter a Holiday Raffle to win prizes; proceeds to support Neighborhood House's Emergency Food Box Program. [NOTE: I've seen these boxes all over, but have not seen any entry forms yet]
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3rd
Enjoy Strolling Carolers and street performers.
Breakfast with Santa, 8:30-10:30AM, Lucky Lab Public House

get your face painted while waiting to vidit Santa at O'Connors Annex, noon -2PM

Crazy Quilt demonstration and sample sale at Fibers in Motion, 1-2PM

Personalized beaded wire ornaments - Free - at Village Beads noon-3PM

Learn to make a Yule Log, 1-3PM, Jacqueline's Found and Fabulous

Kid's ornament craft activity, 1-3PM, Thinker Toys

Now that sounds like a full slate of activity to me. Avoid the malls and come over to the Village this Friday to add some local flavor to your Christmas shopping this year.

Village Coffee

2005-11-26T17:32:00.000-08:00

So last Wednesday, I met Alicia of Digit 13 at Village Coffee, representing my "real life identity". Digit 13 is Alicia's web design company, about whose work I cannot say enough good things. She had warned me ahead of time that Village Coffee was her "office away from home" and the stack of her business cards next to the register backed this point up!

How can an area a compact as Multnomah Village support more than one coffee shop? Well, if you've lived in Portland for a while you are aware that coffee shops have their own distinct personalities, and customers that fit their particular vibe. Village Coffee is a great example of this. If Starbucks (less than a block away) is the yuppie coffee place, than Village Coffee would be the hippie coffee place. However, that's far to simplistic a characterization. For me, Village Coffee feels like Portland coffee shops USED to be, before the ubiquitousness of Starbucks and their sub-brands took over every other corner.

It's tight in there, four tables inside, and it's always warm - which is a welcome thing this season. The most coveted seats would have to be the row of three old-style theater seats facing the window. Although the outdoor tables would come in a close second. When I was there to meet Alicia, every table was taken with people working, meeting and talking. The outside was full too, despite the biting wind, and of course there was a dog on the sidewalk. There is ALWAYS a dog in front of Village Coffee, or so it seems. There are also a core group of regulars. One of whom has had to move on to a different shop since falling victim to the infamous condo conversion of the Meditteranean Apartments down the street. I didn't know him, but no matter when I drove by (which is often, since I live on 35th) that guy was outside. Day or night. They must have taken a revenue hit when he had to move!

Village Coffee features organic roasted coffee with several different flavors, and a huge wall of Torani syrups, if you swing that way. There are massive quantities of reading material, games etc. This is not the shop to pop into to get your fix on the way to work - although you SHOULD, since it beats standing on line at Starbucks, but this is a shop in which to linger - pull out your sketchbook or your laptop, try to score a theater seat and watch the village go by. The vibe is friendly and conversational.

Oh, a note about laptops - if you're working on your computer, you're working offline. No wireless. It's OK, you can handle it. In fact, maybe leave the machine at home this time and savor the experience. Village Coffee is a hangout, and I mean that in the best sense of the word.

The Forest Primeval

2005-11-23T10:10:00.000-08:00

If you walk to Gabriel Park via Little Gabriel (at the end of Canby Street over by the Post Office), or via Nevada Street which is the quickest way from our house, you pass through the deep woods. You can continue through a short area of forest and brushy wetlands to get into the park straight away, or you can turn off onto one of the trails that leads into our own little deep woods.

We love wandering through here, especially in the morning when it's all misty or in the summer when the trees keep the paths shady and cool. Since this is Oregon, there's little underbrush in this section of forest and the hills and HUGE trees make you feel like you've stepped back hundreds of years, or into the pages of some fantastic storybook wood.

You can get to this area from the winter season dog park by just passing by the gates and heading straight into the woods.

In the interest of full disclosure - we're still in Portland, so this area is best enjoyed before dark.

November Neighborhood Association Meeting

2005-11-09T08:50:00.000-08:00

We are losing the war on weeds! (Here's the backstory)

So we were all witness to the power of celebrity last night at the MVNA meeting, as the popular City Commissioner Sam Adams (website, blog) drew around 20+ people to the normally small monthly meeting. Discussions of sewers, traffic speed and of course the infamous tram ensued.

The theme of the night was likely "Capitol Highway is a deathtrap". This was aided by the unfortunate rear-ending of a village resident's car in front of West Hills Early Childhood Learning Center. Since Jr. V was at West Hills for nearly three years I can attest to the adventure that is pulling in and out of their parking lot, not to mention any of the adjacent homes' driveways, which was the case last night. Lots of talk of sidewalks and ways to reduce speed of traffic.

This has particular resonance for me, since I live on 35th, which is just as much an arterial street and LOTS less improved than Capitol. Speeders are a regular thing and Tri-Met is the worst offender. Although in their defense I think they have to build up speed to get up the hill. I would very much like to see the stop at 35th and Logan Street made into a mandatory safety stop, just to slow down the buses.

Sam is the commissioner in charge of, amongst other things, Arts and Culture funding and Sewers. (Insert your own joke about arts funding going down the drain here.)

I enjoyed his comments. He seemed in command of the wide ranging topics and the labyrinthine system of City versus State and Federal funding on a number of projects. No mean feat. He presents well, and I can understand why he's become such a celebrity of the local political scene, if there is such a thing.

In other meeting notes, the attendees were a refreshing cross-section of ages from hippie twentysomethings to hippie sixtysomethings and beyond, and a wide range of in-betweeners such as myself. We nominated and elected officers to the four positions. All candidates ran unopposed. The new Secretary was a young woman who came to her first meeting and said something along the lines of "I'd like to get involved". Well, she's involved now! It's good. It's nice to see more people taking an interest in our neighborhood.

With that said, there is a "placemaking" potluck being hosted at the Multnomah Post's office this Thursday the 10th (tomorrow) at 7PM. Placemaking is a concept taking hold in some Portland neighborhoods, particularly in Southeast, and is probably most famous for creating decorated intersections that become neighborhood gathering spaces. There has been some momentum lately toward creating a "center" for the Village - a sort of town-square sort of place. This is another step on that road. If you're interested in this sort of thing, stop by. Here's a link to the City Repair Project's About Us Page which gives more info about the organization behind this event , and the theory behind the organization.

Coyote!

2005-11-07T10:08:00.000-08:00

So I'm driving out Capitol to Barbur on Friday night, about 9:45 and what do I see walking along the side of the road? A coyote! I've seen them up in the hills, and on the golf course at Red Tail, but never so close to the village. I guess it makes sense though, with the expanse of woodlands and parklands that we have right around Multnomah. Still, I was suprised.

Mrs. V, typically, does not believe me and is convinced that I saw a dog. Mrs. V vastly underestimates my powers of animal identification.

Five Questions: Pamela Alexander

2005-11-01T15:46:00.000-08:00

Today, our five questions are answered by Pamela Alexander, of Multnomah Village Massage.

How long have your business been in Multnomah Village?
I opened Multnomah Village Massage in May 2000. 5+ years.

Why did you decide to locate your business to the Village?
I had been practicing massage for a day spa in Beaverton and was looking to get closer to Portland but not downtown exactly. During my senior year at Lewis and Clark College I worked at Annie Blooms. I remember the village feeling very cozy and looked to return to this in opening up my own massage space.

What would you like to see in the Village that we DON'T have?
My husband Kyle wants to put in his request for a "Brew-n-View." (Like the Bagdad or Clinton Street) And a mascot!

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing our neighborhood?
Keeping the cozy village feel amidst all the growth.

What is your favorite thing, or favorite place in Multnomah?
Multnomah Village Massage of course! Oh and I am fond of upper Gabriel Park on the backside of the Village.

My previous post about one of my recent visits to Pam is here

Drowning in leaves?

2005-10-31T10:47:00.000-08:00

Leaf disposal is on in Gabriel Park - since all MY leaves have certainly come down (and I'm glad I cut my grass yesterday, too) - I am certainly overflowing in lawn debris. This is a problem since I can never remember when lawn debris day IS anymore, now that it no longer coincides with my payday schedule. However - the leaf disposal takes over the parking lot off of Vermont, just below the kids play area in the park. Here's the schedule. I know this doesn't include times - it's like 8AM to 4PM, but Portland Transportation's website is down right now and I don't remember the schedule from when I drove by yesterday. I'll update this tonight.

Sunday, October 30
Sunday, November 6
Saturday, November 12
Saturday, November 19

The cost will be: $1 per car load, $4 per truck, SUV or trailer load, $5 per truck and trailer, $30 per commercial load (5 yd. maximum – larger loads will be referred to commercial recycle centers). There will be a $1 discount for senior citizens. Leaves collected become part of the city’s recycling eff ort and are turned into compost. For more information, call the leafline at 503-823-1784 or Portland Transportation dot org

From my experience last year. They will take all your leaves, but they will not take your lawn debris bags - so if you have leaves and stuff in bags - you'll have to empty out the bags when you get to the leaf drop, and then schlep your empty bags home with you.

Just in time for the Holidays

2005-10-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

Jr. V made some money yesterday, and we let him take $20 up to Thinker Toys (here's a link to their woefully out of date website) and buy whatever he wanted. As we walked in the door he made a beeline for the Playmobil section, and found that it had been moved!

I thought I had posted about this earlier, but when we had visited the store on First Friday this month, I noticed some remodeling being done at the back of the store. Much to the delight of Jr. V they have turned the entire back section of the store into a HUGE Playmobil display. This is the area that used to house all the puppets and costumes, but apparently the Playmobil stock has grown too big for the center of the store. Jr. V picked out something he could afford and we left happy.

It's nice having such a quality toy store so close to home.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes....

2005-10-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

There are a few new things going up and going in, in the Village these days. Have you noticed? There's a coin shop that will be opening soon on the corner of 36th and whatever that road that runs behind the Village is called, and there's a vegetarian restaurant opening at some point in the old Pizza Schmizza location next to Jeff Parker Realty.

So I did actually stop into Fusion Cut and Color today, As I mentioned yesterday, and Adrienne and I talked a bit about the new building going up across the street from the salon. According to Adrienne, it's not going to be residential (which makes sense although it would have been kinda cool) but will consist of ground-floor retail and the upper floor will be artists work spaces (or studios of some sort). She then mentioned that she had just found out that there aren't really three floors, as it looks like there will be, but that the second level windows are really a clerestory [definition] and the ceiling of the first story will be double-height. Well, OK "clerestory" is my word - if only to prove to Professor Andrus that I was actually paying attention, even though I wasn't taking notes, back in 1989. Either way - perhaps there will be some sort of loft? We didn't know. Adrienne wondered if there'd be an elevator?

We'll keep our eyes on this. And oh yes, my hair does look nice, thanks!

Some layout updates

2005-10-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

In general administration notes - I've added a little banner with the time of the next upcoming neighborhood association meeting. All meetings are in Room 14 in the Multnomah Center.

Also, on the sidebar you will see this link:

If you click on it, this leads to the category tags for this site on del.icio.us and should help occasional and new readers find things by subject. Yes, I know that if I was using Movable Type that I would have category tagging "built in", but right now I don't have the energy to migrate and learn a new system. Perhaps in the future.