The Multnomah Villager

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.

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.

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….

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.