The Multnomah Villager

So Saturday morning, as is our habit on weekends, we went up the hill to have breakfast in the Village. For some reason, instead of turning down and hitting our usual table at O’Connor’s, we decided to go down to Marco’s and eat there. This is highly unusual for us, in fact I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten breakfast there before. We were out early, so we ha dlots of elbow room in the sun-filled dining room. I was amused to watch the boy at the next table who was all of maybe 11 years old, hitting on our waitress. He’s got quite a crush on her. “Fabas indulcet fames” indeed. I’m not going to spend too much time deconstructing Marco’s. The food is good, although a little expensive for breakfast, in my opinion - a person should certainly be able to get two eggs any style, bacon, toast and coffee for well under $10. Anyway, after the World’s Most Bacon-Filled Omelet we hit the sidewalk well-fed, although I was grumbling a bit about the price. Note that these comments apply to breakfast, and the tasty-looking chocolate cake in the dessert case has got me thinking about checking out Marco’s dinner menu sometime soon. So we walked up and grabbed a couple of “Magic Tree House” books for Jr. V at Annie Blooms and then popped into Baby! Oh Baby! to look around and bit and chat up the owner. Time to head home and realx for a bit before gearing up for a longer walk on this sunny very warm March day.

Early afternoon finds us heading up the hill again following the sound of a bagpiper in front of Renner’s which we can hear from halfway down the hill. I am reminded of the rants made by a former acquaintance of Scottish descent, abour how the Irish have appropriated bagpipes as a symbol from the Scots. Anyway, we head up through the Village and the streets are busy since it’s sunny and like 65 degrees. We’re in shorts and maiing tracks for Baskin Robbins up in Hillsdale for a nice cone. We stopped for a second at the Lucky Lab, so that Jr. V could say hello to John Blanck, who’s the principal at Maplewood, and was enjoying a slice and a pint in the outdoors with some friends.
We then headed up Capitol and stopped into said for a nice chat with Sue, which I’ll post about later.

A quick stop at the Hoot Owl for a bottle of water and soon we’re eating ice cream on the porch beside Baskin Robbins watching cars go by and enjoying the sun. Our walk continues up the hill, as we’re headed for the playground at Rieke. We took a little side trip to Alternate Universe to ogle Magic cards and soak in the gamer vibe, which was a little bit of a system shock for Mrs. V, having not been exposed to gamers in such a concentration before now. As we started to cross the street towards Rieke, clouds were beginning to move in and we began to suspect that our sunny walk might end with a damp tramp home. Alas, it was not to be as the sun held out for our return.

A big walk on a nice sunny Saturday. Nothing wrong with that.

The following request showed up in my email box yesterday…

I would love to find out what happened to all the memorabilia that was in the old Red Electric Cafe in Multnomah Village. We are starting a development called Springbrook in Newberg, and at the turn of the last century, Springbrook was on the old Red Electric line and it played a big part in community life. It would be wonderful to have some of that memorabilia for use in a small museum perhaps. Thanks to anyone who can
help.

Oh, don’t get me started on how much I miss the cafe. Mrs. V and I ate there from when it was just three tables and the kitchen, pretty much all together, through the expansion and up until the drama-packed implosion of that iteration of Bertha Station. So if any one has any info about the stuff that used to be in there, send me a comment or email it to Joe Kavale @ Springbrook Properties

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.

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.

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!

Anytime we have 90 degree weather, the Villager begins to think longingly about sleeping at the office, or a nice air conditioned hotel room. I’d consider a tent in the backyard, but traffic’s kind of heavy down my street at night, and our neighbors have been in a party mood lately. So other means of cooling off are required.

Enter Wilson Pool. We were out of town when the Grand Re-Opening happened, and that sounded a little crowded for our tastes anyway. So today was the day. After waiting impatiently for the noon opening time, we headed up the hill to Wilson High and approached the parking lot. This is when we were remiminded that the Hillsdale Farmers Market had recently relocated to the same general area. This made parking somewhat of an adventure. In fact it’s a good thing the pool doesn’t open before noon, or there would be no place to park at all.

We headed up the path behind the end zone of the football field and took our place in line. We were a little suprised at such a long line so early. Little did we know. That’s Jr. Villager there in the hat, having discovered one of his favorite school friends ahead of us in line.

The pool has two main areas, the “regular pool” where a person would swim lapes if there had been maybe around 600 fewer people there, and the kids area seen above. The kids area is split into sort of four “themes”. There’s the shallow end with a large umbrella over the water (cool) and the little froggy slide, which Jr. Villager would not go down, since it sprays water at you at the top. There’s the big water slide - not as big and fast as the one at the Southwest Community Center Pool, but good enough for today. And then there’s the “current channel” and this cool vortex which was great at first, until too many people clogged it up. And last there is the deeper end of the shallow area where buckets periodically pour water onto the carefully positioned heads of “unsuspecting” parents.

Thoughts:

• We should have come for the grand opening, it could not have been more crowded than today
• The shallow end under the umbrella could stand to be about 6 inches deeper
• The water is VERY warm, since the pool is so shallow - however, this is also a result of the run of sunny days we’ve had in a row, so you know how that goes
• The entrance/exit process to the vortex is not graceful. Especially with four or five 12 year old kids thrown into the mix
• Apparently, you’re not allowed to take the rafts that they have into the “current channel”. I think there’s been some false advertising here.
• Did I mention there were a lot of people there? We saw LOTS of people we know and the kids area of the pool became so crowded you literally could not move freely.

Apparently the best time to go is around 5PM on weekdays. It ain’t cheap. You’re looking at the standard fee of around $3 something per person (exact details on the site). Good news is (sarcasm) that a family membership can be bought, giving you all-you-can-swim until September for $163. Given that this is July 17th, you better prepare to swim a LOT, if you want to get your money’s worth on that one.

According to Portland Parks & Recreation, Wilson Pool is the most popular outdoor pool, and the only one on the west side of Portland. I think we’ll stick with the Southwest Community Center Pool though, which is more our “home pool” anyway, but Wilson Pool made for a fun Sunday field trip to Hillsdale.

One last note: This would be a pretty cool pool to have at your high school. My school had this whirpool bath in the guy’s locker room that one football player at a time could sit in. Kinda looked like a cattle trough. That’s the closest we got to a pool at school.

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?