The Multnomah Villager

So you can’t move around the Village and environs these days without running across one of those stand-up ads for The Eliason School of Music, which I have posted about before (I can’t come out and play, I have to practice my violin…) I’m not a shill for these guys or anything, but you can’t miss the advertising this year, and I think it’s terribly charming that we have a violin (and piano) school here in the Village. The website is nice looking, designed by an outfit out of Eugene called Eideashop. Heck, I took piano lessons for years, maybe I’ll give them a call on behalf of Jr. V one of these days.

Pick up a Portland tribune today and check out the article on page 2 about the potential sidewalks and general improvements needed to major thoroughfares in and about the Village. Capitol Highway and SW 35th are prominently mentioned. We certainly do need some improvements, and there’s really no excuse for unpaved roads within the close-in city limits in my view, but I have decidedly mixed feelings about these “improvements”. And of course, they’re totally selfish. While I’d love to see sidewalks (and a few more speedbumps) on SW 35th, I’ll lose my only parking if we get them. My house is below street level and we don’t have a driveway - so I’m interested to hear how the city would deal with a situation like mine, you know, in the abstract. I don’t really want to have Sam Adams show up at the door with a hardhat on anytime soon.
Here’s a link to the whole story:
Street Squeeze May Be Eased @ Portland Tribune

Well, this is it - the last time I’m going to talk about the process of moving this ‘blog off of Blogger and onto it’s own server (Dreamhost) and Wordpress. I’m done with all the major work (just in time for the update to Wordpress 2.1!) and now it’s just day-to-day maintenance and tweaking.

Here’s a list of things that have been added, or dropped or just changed in general for this new site:

• Added some static pages to the site - look over there on the sidebar (Links, About, Archives, Gallery, Contact) these are 100% complete, but the structure is there. Check out the links page in particular and let me know what I’m missing - I’m tyring to keep a pretty complete list. However, I’m pretty restrictive about which “Other Local Blogs” are on the list. That one’s constrained mostly to the blogs of Village residents or our close neighbors, so if you want me to add a ‘blog, please keep this in mind. I may add a “friends” section of links for other’s sties in general, but not right away.
• I have migrated 100% of the posts over from the old site, but none of the comments. Migration of comments is kind of a giant pain in the back side, especially since Blogger launched it’s new version, which broke all the existing Wordpress import scripts. I got all these posts in by working in the PHP database itself, which was a semi-automated process, but comment association would be a different animal entirely. I intend to keep the old site accessible for some time, but I am done posting new content to that URL. It’s all happening here now.
• I am attempting to be careful with categories, and make them easy to find. Check out the different ways to search for, or click to posts on the sidebar and Archives page. A large amount of my traffic comes from Google searches for the content of my previous posts, and the shelf-life of some of the things I post is rather long, so being able to find things easily is becoming a major emphasis.
• My new statistics tracker has shown me how many people are reading this site via the RSS feed. It’s a much larger number than I suspected.
• On the dark side, I’m getting (just starting this week) a large amount of comment spam. I am aware that this is an issue, and I’ll have to lock things down a little. I’m moderating first-time commenters though so sorry guys - you’re going to miss out on all the incredlble online casino and performance enhancing drug offers.

There’s a few things  I still need to work out, namely how to integrate the “date of the next MNA meeeting” thing with my header without breaking all the layout, and I’m still tweaking exactly what I want the sidebar to contain on which views. All the while fighting the power of the temptation to load up on Wordpress “widgets” which are legion. The ones I am using are mostly along the lines of site-management helpers, etc. There is a very cool one which displays a little “updated today” graphic in the upper left hand corner of the page which worked until I change my URL scheme, and now I have broken it. A longish nerd-session will get that working though.

Anyway, nothing’s worse than a blog that spends all it’s time talking about being a blog and forgets to include any actual content, so I will end this here. I hope you like the new layout and thanks so much for reading and sticking with me as things have gotten goofy lately.

Well, “patrol” may be too strong a term, but we observed a group of several people and a stroller walking down 35th the other night, armed with flashlights and wearing reflective vests and those glowy sashes that you used to get to wear when you were on “bus patrol” or crossing gaurd duty, back in the day. This group stopped awhile and shined lights down one of the side streets and then walked on down 35th. So yes, I think we must have a neighborhood watch group or something. I’m not sure I’d want to chase a perp while pushing a jog-stroller, but perhaps that’s why I was headed indoors, and not out looking out for my fellow citizens, eh?

No, this isn’t a rant about renters, in fact we’re kind of feeling sorry for them at this moment. Of course, that assumes that there are any renters LEFT in the Village and environs. We hear from Mrs. V’s friend down at John’s Market that the Multnomah Village Townhouses are going condo. That’s the funky little wooden shingle mansardish roofed complex immediately east of the viaduct, right next door to the auto repair place. Word is that they’re going to be $279,000. Now 2BR/2BA and 1100 square feet for 279K is a good price if you’re talking about a house in the Village, but for an apartment? One of those apartments?! I think not, thanks. Man, we really got a steal of a deal when we bought our house almost ten years ago for less that 200K - that kind of price would be like winning the lottery now. To think that it takes almost 300 grand to get into a condo under the bridge right off of Multnomah Boulevard? I definitely feel for anyone trying to get started as a homeowner these days, and I know what we all think about apartment complexes and renters, but can’t we preserve SOME space for people that choose to or have to rent? Part of the charm of the Village has been it’s accessibility. I’d hate to think of us losing that, ’cause we are, bit by bit.

It’s not that I’m anti-change. In fact I’m likely more pro-business than 80% of the neighborhood, and I am behind the idea of people owning their own homes and condos (for the tax benefits if nothing else) but it’s been hard to see the prices climb so high in Portland (and everywhere else). I had enough trouble getting into a house, how is my son going to do it?

At our annual Christmas Eve open house this year, we were trading stories with our across-the-street neighbors when the subject of this website came up. The phrase “So! It’s You!” was used. Well, here is where the tables turn. Here’s a link to the Multnomah Village section of my neighbor’s blog featuring a couple nice image galleries of life in the Village over the last couple of years. We’re just blogging fools down this side of the street, aren’t we?

So we are snowed in again today, thanks to the Portland Public Schools being closed, Mrs V’s office is closed, and I’m working from my dining room. We decided to head up to the Village for breakfast this morning, and since O’Connor’s was opening late due to needing some extra time to get their crew in, we headed to Fat City. Great breakfast as always, with tales of drivers sliding down the hills flying around the room. Someone slid down the hill and took out the sign next to Post Hip, and apparently a truck just missed sliding into Fusion. Tamara and Adrienne (and the Bento Hut guy as well) certainly picked the right week to take a vacation.

Hey - here’s a picture of the “adult snowman” outside O’Connor’s. Very nice!

We walked to Safeway to pick up some supplies and noticed how many business owners were out clearing the walks and steps in front of and around their businesses. The owners of the soon-to-open Journey’s Pub were doing a great job on the sidewalk, and even Brian Russell (chair of the Multnomah Neighborhood Association) was lending a shovel on the sidewalks above Renner’s and Village Beads.

Snow days are fun. Especially when you live so near the Village and don’t have to make the trek to the office.

Oh, I just got this email from the maintainer of the Multnomah Village Yahoo! group. So nice I’ll quote it here:

Hi, all! Hope you’ve been enjoying the more positive aspects of the Winter Wonderland we’re experiencing! (Not the driving part!)

Yesterday was amazing… it was so much fun to tromp down in my new snow boots to Gabriel Park and see all the kids enjoying themselves sledding and snowboarding. The dogs looked like they had died and gone to heaven!

Walked through the Village afterwards, and noticed how all the others doing the same shared smiles and good spirits. It was great! I’ve just gone to the wonderful Multnomah Villager blog to see if the mysterious Mr. V had added some more of his great pics to the site, and sure enough, check out Multnomah Village with its very becoming blanket of white:

http://www.multnomahvillager.com

While we’re at it, big KUDOS on the new dot com site, Mr. V! Looks great! :-)

So, since the snow boots worked so well, today I’m going to try the new SNOW SHOES! Yippeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

How about you? How are you folks making the most of this Winter Wonderland? :-)

Have fun and be careful everyone! It’s melting, but still very slick, and there’s rumblings of more snow and ice tonight.

Well, if you’re anywhere near Portland, you know that it snowed today. Of course, the weather people had no idea there was going to be any accumulation, so I was counting on about 8 inches. I look to have been about half right. There’s got to be more than 3 inches on my deck, etc. Due to an unfortunate miscalculation on my part, I had to make a trek into the office, which is just over the Hawthorne bridge on the east side. I set off to catch a bus….

Snow was covering everything, and there were no buses around, since they had all slid off into either a ditch, the side of the road or osme combination of the two. I headed to Barbur to grab a 12. The Village was still pretty quiet covered with snow….

After a major trek into downtown and across the bridge, I found my way back home, thanks to my co-worker Justin, who saved my behind.. I discovered that when I got to the office I had forgotten my keys! If Justin hadn’t showed, I would have been screwed.

When I got back home, the action was hot and heavy on the major sledding hill here in the Village, which is down the middle of 36th Avenue between Canby and Custer, although if you build up enough speed you can make it halfway to Logan. There was a good turnout.. Oh, here’s a view from the top of the hill.

Jr. V and I did a couple of runs with some neighbors. There was a wide selection of snow-riding devices from a large cookie sheet to a sled being pulled by an ATV and pretty much everything in between. Erik Vidstrand passed us going downhill on cross country skis - he’s a pretty good XC skier from the look of things. After a bit we trudged home, since after all, I’m “working”.

We’ll be heading back out in a bit, and probably walking up to the Village to either eat dinner or at the least pick upa bottle of wine from John’s. There’s a steady stream of walkers now, outside my window.

So I’m coming home from picking up Jr. V at the JCC, where he’s at Kids Corner after school and on holidays such as today, and we passed by “Healthy Pets” which is going into the empty space next to Village Rugs in that building on Capitol Highway that also houses Otto & Anita’s. Healthy Pets, according to their sign, will be selling “natural pet food and supplies”. Well, one assumes that the food will be natural, since pet supplies are almost universally made from plastic, cotton/poly blends, etc. Still - this seems like the perfect thing for the Village, considering the critical mass of dogs and cats that we’ve got going on around here. Good luck! We’ll stop by when you’re open to pick up a few odds and ends for Daphne and Velma, our kittens.

So the process of defining an Adventure Park in Spring Garden Park, which I have posted about here, continues. I was reading the New York Times the other day when I came across this article about a similar park which in the process of being created at South Street Seaport in Manhattan. Since the Times requires a login, I’m going to excerpt the article a bit, but you should read the whole thing on the Time’s Site (link is below).

Photo: Kinnaresh Mistry and the Rockwell Group

The concept is not just another accouterment for Manhattan’s pampered toddler set. Rather, city officials say, it reflects the latest thinking about child-rearing. They hope the new playground concept will be replicated across the five boroughs and that it will serve as an inspiration for other cities.

“This is a very exciting idea in its physical presentation and its potential to change the way we think of playgrounds,” said the city’s parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, adding that it could “once again put New York City on the cutting edge of playground design and development.”

Based on child-development theories that children need to engage in social and fantasy play rather than just build physical skills, the project was conceived and is being designed at no charge by David Rockwell, famous for creating adult play spaces like the restaurants Nobu and Café Gray and the Mohegan Sun casino and resort.

Although the space is to be open to the public, the play workers, a concept already popular in Europe, are being financed by Mr. Rockwell, who is raising $2 million privately to cover the costs.

The American playground of swing sets and steel monkey bars has already been evolving with more imaginative features in recent years. But behaviorists and others say planners could go even further to reflect more refined ideas about nurturing children, especially those younger than 12.

It would be really cool to have somoething like this in the Village, although our directions are certainly more modest that this $2 Million extravangaza.

What the Rockwell Group has proposed for Lower Manhattan is a figure-eight-shape landscape, with sloping wooden ramps for running that connect a zone of sand to a zone of water. A structure would house the loose parts, including foam blocks, small boats and collections of tubing, elbows and gaskets for construction projects, all to be maintained and overseen by the play workers.

The design also calls for a system of pulleys and ropes for children to lift and transport objects, as well as a climbing net and shading sails that relate to the area’s maritime history and setting.

Hopefully, the people involved in designing this adventure park have read this and similar articles, since a poll of local six-year-olds in this house reveals a very enthusiastic audience for adventure parks in general.

The link the the entire Times article is here (login required) New York Tries to Think Outside the Sandbox