The Multnomah Villager

So I mentioned a few posts ago that there was a presentation to the neighborhood association meeting regarding the potential re-routing of Tri-Met’s #39 bus. There’s not much that can be added to this conversation by the likes of me, so I’ll dispense with a bunch of heavy analysis. Here’s the website that was referenced in the meeting with all the details:

Route 39

The gist of it is, that due to no revenue on the route right now, Tri-Met is considering changing the route to send the bus across the Terwilliger Bridge, up Capitol and through the village to the post office, than looping around back down Multnomah Blvd to Lewis & Clark. I have this to say about that:

• At least it’s not running down 35th
• Thank heavens they’re not trying to run it through the Village. We got enough buses running through there already. Traffic can’t get much worse
• This will be good for businesses, particularly the “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” guy. Not so good for those row-house denizens on the way to the post office. There goes your quiet.
• I agree that a route past Fred Meyer would be better, especially if they doremodel and make the place more of a destination. However, the Hillsdale neighborhood Assoc probably wouldn’t be too thrilled about that
• I agree that it would be good for Hillsdale businesses. It’s impossible to drive to anything up there, forget about the recent construction, have you ever tried to get in and out of that parking lot?

So yesterday seemed to be a “visit nearby businesses” day, and by nearby, I mean not in the Village, but close enough to be on our regular rotation of places to go. I started off by ducking out of work at 4PM and heading over to get my hair cut as Vis a Vis Salon. Now, I have pretty low-maintenance hair, but I’ve been going to see Barb at Vis-a-Vis for a long time now. Is it the headrubs? Well, it’s something. Mrs. Villager tolerates my HUGE crush on Barb with bemused embarrassment, to be sure. Now I know that since I live in the Village and all, you’d assume that I’d go to Glitzie’s, or knowing me, somewhere more like an old-style barber shop.

Actually, I have been to see the folks at Fusion Cut & Color when I can’t get in to see Barb, and both of the women at Fusion are great. I would highly recommend dropping by there for a cut or something more involved.

However, yesterday was Vis-a-Vis day, and while I’m on the subject I should mention that I’ve also been to Vis-a-Vis for a facial. Yes, you read that right. Get over it, it’s 2005. Jen Keller does the facials there, and I’ve been to her twice. Mrs. Villager goes on a more regular basis. Jen is quite good, and the room is very private, guys, no one can see you in there.

We have a long history with the businesses at Bertha Station, especially back in the pre-Jr-Villager days, when the Red Electric cafe was there (it used to be two tables and the grill - all together), and the coffee shop was a coffee and cigar store with a fantastic collection of magazines, a great humidor and chess tables upstairs. Then of course, there was “the drama” that led to the changing of the hands of the coffee shop, the Red Electric went away as well. Vesuvius came and went (we loved the play area there), but now things are pretty stable. I’ll leave further hyping to some Hillsdale neighborhood blogger.

Oh, one last tip. At the coffee shop, they have these cinnamon roll things that kind of look like a cross between a croissant and a sea anenome. Try one. Have them heat it up. Get a fork.

Later, after dinner, we headed over to Garden Home and got a cone at Dairy Queen, than Jr. Villager and I went to Gabriel Park and rode the bike a little bit before hiking to the top of the big hill overlooking the community center to marvel at the sheer amount of sports going on at the park last night. From the hill we could see tennis, volleyball, frisbee, baseball, soccer, dog frisbee and geurilla gymnastics on the exercise bars next to the beach volleyball courts.

Was that Kelley Day that passed us at the light? Does she live over here?

So another thing that I discovered yesterday was the “Southwest Neighborhood News”. I actually came across this paper via a Google search yesterday and then found several copies on the table at the Multnomah NA meeting last night.

WARNING: Their website is visually horrible. Whoever decided to put blue link-text over a dark green-blue background is never doing any design work for me. Do people even try to read their own sites?

On a positive note however, the current issue (and I assume every issue) is available online as a complete PDF. Here’s a direct link to the current issue.

The paper itself is rather informative, with a great overview of the various neighborhood associations meetings and lists of permit applications in a readable form. It’s certainly directed at more of a wonky audience than the more visible papers in Southwest, but that’s good for me.

I have no idea how I’ve lived here this long and never seen this publication before. I am a voracious reader and pick up as many of Portland’s free papers as I can. In fact, that’s one of the things that helped me to decide to move to Portland, all those years ago.

So The Villager did in fact go the Multnomah Neighborhood Association meeting last night after all. I suppose it was about what I expected it to be. The crowd was just about skewing as old as I thought, although there were a few younger (30-ish) folks there. At least two reporters, one of whom - Don Snedecor of the Multnomah Village Post - is rather a bit younger than I expected. It was refreshing to see that there were a few “regular neighborhood residents” (I assume) at the meeting.

It was short. We discussed, or rather witnessed the discussion of, several “issues” including the following list, some of which I’ll be posting about in greater detail later today.

• The proposed re-routing of Tri-Met’s route 39 bus
• A few mystery land use issues most probably related to people building the “wrong kind” of houses, etc.
• Larger land use issues accompanied by mutiple, multiple-page handouts that the Villager has not yet read
• The potential closing, reduction in funding for Fulton Community Center, and Multnomah Center, along with parks re-zoning

A funny thing - I had forgotten about the practice of making and seconding “motions” to do things like end the meeting and offer support for proposals. This is funny to me since I spend a disproportionate amount of my life in meetings. However, I have not been in this sort of meeting since, I think, the last PTA meeting I attended, at that would have been as a student. A grade school student.

There was an amusing interval towards the end of the presentation on the potential Tri-Met rerouting, wherein one of the attendees “moved” that we support the re-routing, but discussion erupted before the motion could be “seconded”. I enjoyed watching the interplay between the co-facilitators, as they looked for an opening in the conversation to mention that the motion still had no second. This was much more entertaining in the moment, than it is reading about it later, to be sure.

Nevertheless the motion was eventually seconded. No such problem occured when a motion was put forth to adjourn.

I’m glad I went - I’ll probably go back. Gotta be careful though, since meetings like this tend to stimulate my management tendencies. The last thing I need is to get “involved” in government, even at the neighborhood level, but I’ll make sure that questions get asked!

Oh - there was some discussion about the existence of this ‘blog, and some good-natured speculation about “The Villager’s” identity. Prompted no doubt by an email I sent to Don Snedecor at the Post. Not exactly a “blogging” crowd last night, by their own admission, which is OK - I’m still working up enough content to justify being more public about this experiment. Thanks for the compliment though, Don.

Only in Portland do you think to yourself, “It’s kinda cold and wet outside… I know, let’s go to the pool!” Jr. Villager and I piled in the car and headed over to The Southwest Community Center Pool today for “family swim”. We were not alone. Well, We met one of Jr. Villager’s school friends there, and quickly ran into another one in the water. I’m telling you, half of SW Portland was at the pool today. It was a mob scene in there!

If you haven’t been to the Southwest Community Center, you should consider a visit. The center is quite large, although it only takes up about a quarter of Gabriel Park’s 90+ acres. I was just thinking to myself last night how big the park was before the center went in, and it’s still huge. If not Portland’s largest park, certainly high on the list. But I digress.

We stashed out towels in one of the cubby holes and hit the water. The center features a full-on lap pool, but that’s not really the point. The point, especially for those of us with small kids, is the activity pool. There’s a sloping bottom entrance and an expansive shallow end with one of those Rube Goldberg water squirting contraptions that will look familiar to anyone who remembers the game “Mousetrap”. But the main draw is The Big Blue Slide. Oh yes, this is a major waterslide. This ain’t no 70’s era ladder-and-slab slide, oh no. We’re talking about a serious slide. One that adults can enjoy. Gotta carry kids below 48″ on your lap, but you can still pick up speed. This thing is tall. So we went down the slide a few times, and hung about in the water.

If you think I’m joking about going to the pool to warm up, I’m not. The pool is heated to 89 degrees (says the website) and it’s true. It’s rather bath-like in there. Just the thing for a chilly summer day. Don’t you just love Oregon summers? However, the heat, and the pool’s popularity remind me of the big downside of the pool - it is heavily chlorinated. Goggles are highly recommended.

Lots more stuff goes on at the community center. I’ll write about it sometime. I remember when the things was approved, Mrs. Villager and I were rather upset that “they” were stealing so much of our park for this huge center, but in retrospect - it’s been great. The City did a great job. As you would expect in present-day Portland, it’s all puffed up with eco-features and political correctness, but in the end it’s just a great place to hang out.

Except for the chlorine. Man, it’s hard on the eyes.

Well, we discovered something interesting in the Park today…

The family dropped by Gabriel Park for a short time around 6:30 this evening, so Jr. Villager could have some bike-riding practice. Upon pulling into the parking lit, we noticed a tent set up, covering a table with several computers and what looked like a video feed. This whole setup was wired to a contraption that looked like a couple of shotgun mics on some sort of plywood shoulder-mount rig, affixed to a large tripod. There was also some sort of radio antenna. We wondered what this group of people was up to. I mentioned to Mrs. Villager that we should go over and find out the deal, that it might make for an interesting ‘blog post.

However, dinner time called and we headed out without investigating. Until we were driving back up Vermont and noticed another tent, this one with what appeared to be a large radio antenna out front. I truned the car around to investigate and when we got closer wo found that it wasn’t an antenna at all, but a rocket and a big one too.

Jr. Villager was fascinated, and so was I. We walked over to find out the deal. Turns out that this rig belongs to the Portland State Aerospace Society, and they were indeed testing radio and communications for an upcoming launch!

Details are on their TWiki site (definition), linked above, but in a nutshell here’s the deal: This was an “LV2 System Test Day”, during which the launcher was set up (sans solid fuel) and communcations were tested. Apparently there had been another test day at the park last week (on the 3rd) as well. The current rocket is being prepped for a launch on August 20th in Brothers, OR. and is expected to send the rocket up to 25,000 feet in the air. Did I mention that the rocket has a live video feed? This must have been what I saw on the screen down at the parking lot. This thing is a big deal, it’s backed by a NASA grant, among others. If I’m in town on the 20th, I might just trek out to Brothers to see the thing take off!

Here’s more info about PSAS, and again, the full story is on their site.

The Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) is an educational aerospace project at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. The group consists of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff of PSU, and local community members- ranging from high school students to engineers in industry- who are interested in aerospace engineering.PSAS is based out of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at PSU, and has members and advisors in the Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering departments.

Our vision statement – or long term goal – is to “put nanosatellites into orbit”. That’s an absurdly hard undertaking when you consider the technical, logistical and financial issues involved. So although we will probably never get there, having this goal allows us to ask the question, “what’s the first step in the process?”

We decided that the first step towards orbiting nanosatellites is to develop an inexpensive, highly modular and actively guided sounding rocket. Sounding rockets are small to medium-sized rockets that are “suborbital” - meaning they can reach extreme altitudes, but then fall down back to the Earth (i.e., they don’t go into orbit). Sounding rockets are useful for scientific research in such fields as astronomy, earth science, materials science, and of course, in engineering.

Our rockets fall into the class of “amateur rocketry” – smaller than commercial rockets, larger than model rockets. We certainly have not build the biggest or highest altitude amateur rocket, but we do hope that we’re building one of the most sophisticated.

That was an interesting walk in the park. You never know what you’ll discover around here. Isn’t Portland cool?

Last night, Jr. Villager and I went on a walk/drive around the neighborhood for some bike practice and playtime. Well, I guess we went on sort of a drive/ride/walk. We started up at the Multnomah Center and I followed Jr. Villager as he rode his little bike down the sidewalks through the village main drag, and then back to the Center.

Then, we decided to make tracks for Custer Park, which is actually named after General George Custer, and not some local Custer. We like Custer Park, since it’s usually a little quieter than it’s more famous neighbor Gabriel Park, but also has a play area that’s more friendly to slightly older kids. One of the cool things about Custer Park is the swings, which have great long chains that give you a long, smooth ride. There are four swings. Two for little kids (the full seat with leg holes kind), and two of the strappy “grown-up” kind. But the really cool thing about them is that they sit on the top of this great hill, giving you an huge expansive view of the park while you’re swinging, making you think you’re catching major air. Forgive the lousy camera-phone picture….

The play area is pretty cool, especially since this is one of the few parks nearby that features a mix of new and classic playground equipment. Can you say “merry-go-round”? See-saws too. How about another lousy picture…

The big hill is great for watching action in the field. There is a full baseball/softball field with a very large outfield, in which there is often some other sport going on. I’ve seen soccer, rugby, pickup football. I wouldn’t mind seeing some pickup Ultimate Frisbee…. We’ve used the hill as a great launching point for one of those big styrofoam gliders. There’s a nice, short walking path that loops down the hill and around the back of the baseball diamond. Last night we watched a pretty hardcore womens softball team practicing. We’ve seen them before. Jr. Villager was very excited to get to fetch a few foul balls.

In a neighborhood with so many great little hideaways, Custer Park makes for a semi-hidden gem. It’s a great place to pass a few hours on a summer evening, between dinnertime and bathtime. See you there sometime!

The Multnomah Village Neighborhood Association will meet on Tuesday July 12th, from 7PM to about 9PM at the Multnomah Center (7668 SW Capitol Highway), which is probably better known as it’s most visible tenant, The Multnomah Arts Center. The Villager might attend, but this is to be determined. I’ve never been to a neighborhood association meeting before, and what with what is going on over at Southwest Hills Residential League, I’m not sure I’m too crazy about getting involved. But then, I have faith in my more level-headed Village residents, so we’ll see.