READING OUT 2022: TOP POSTS ON BOOMERPDX

Reading out 82nd Ave in Portland Oregon leads the list.

Instead of looking like a tired stretch of New Jersey road with Bruce Springsteen sitting on his daddy’s lap as he steered through town, 82nd was a magical fairly tale in 2022.

Did I mention magical?

I called it Dream Street.

That’s what it was for a day and it was more than enough.

What goes better with a dream than hope that it all comes true.

Hoping for the best day in Oregon is an exercise in futility most of the time.

Why? Because we’ve got too much weather. From too much rain, to too many hot days, to cloudy and maybe rain, we still hope.

We hope to land on dream street. 

When it happens, it feels like the stars lining up.

And they did just that on 82nd Avenue.

If time is marked by lasting memories, this one has staying power for me.

And staying power for them.

Who do you hope ‘staying power’ for?

Reading Out Portland Dirt At #2

I lived in Portland in the early 80’s when new buildings started popping up.

First came a huge excavation hole in the middle of town.

Then the questions.

What if the exceptionally motivated, the people who go all in, are denied the chance to sift enough dirt to see what holds meaning for them?

In spite of what you hear, there’s a huge wave of detail obsessed millennials about to demand more dirt.

It happens when you buy a particular house. You’ll need the old house plans, the area map, street history. You feel like breaking into a library when the urge to know everything hits.

And it’s normal.

Give people what they need when they look at a hole in the ground a city block wide and a city block deep.

Give them the Portland dirt.

One novel had a character who wanted to know everything and it gave the picture of what that might mean.

It’s Marathon Man by William Goldman with a side of McCarthyism.

Gym Guy Boundaries 2022 For #3

This post, along with 82nd Ave, made my all time Top 5.

I’ll be writing an update for 2023 called Home Gym Guy Boundaries 2023.

I’m thinking of two home gym guys in particular, a couple of meatheads with something between their ears.

They used the 24 Hr gym to stay strong and play basketball after college years of staying strong and playing basketball that followed high school teams of football, wrestling, tennis, water polo, everything but basketball, the game they love the most.

One of their adult teams competed in a league and won a city championship. They played against teams full of high school super stars and college guys showing their stuff.

And beat them with fundamentals.

Now they are old married men who lift in their home gyms, staying strong to play the game of life.

No, not the board game.

Never look at a naked gym guy’s tattoo.

Chances are good it comes with a history, lots of history. Do you want to spend the next half hour listening to it? But, since you asked, you’re obligated to stand around while a naked guy maps it all out.

And they explain with lots of gestures swinging around. Take a step back.

One guy had his entire life tattooed all over after he got out of prison. Said he did it to balance things out, then went into detail about why he was in prison to begin with.

He even had media references to check. To check or not to check?

Look, you have a life. Do you really want to take the dark journey through tatty guy’s ups and downs if you don’t have to?

If you’ve got a load of ink yourself, you’ll probably exchange stories, like dog people who stop other dog people for a sniff.

I’ve been to the gym three times to re-hab my hip on a treadmill while I pushed up on the side rails.

Looked like the same old gym, just not mine.

Not yet.

Boomerpdx In 2023

As a reader here, what would you like to see in 2023?

I’m glad to have a guest blogger and look forward to more posts.

With clear vision I see a fun year.

A fifty year high school reunion sounds promising. I’ve been getting in shape for it over the past nine years.

All. Most. There.

My regular review of social media, in which I mean the platforms that bring traffic to me and the rest can pound sand, shows a 3 out of 5 ratio of gruesome headlines to attract readers.

Any blogger that doesn’t review is lying. We review and scheme and key word and SEO, anything short of good writing, to boost stats and stroke fragile egos.

Call me backward, but anyone spending hours here reading forty posts is looking for something.

It happens in pockets around the world where some reader falls into this rabbit hole of reading posts on the Most Read list, clicking hyper-links, and catching a wave.

That’s my kind of reader, unless it’s a bot, but I think I’ve got bot traffic figured out.

What they don’t find on any deep dive is spiteful writing and whining and calls to action to be an asshole.

Besides, if you need permission, you’ll never be a very effective jerk, and those are the worst kind.

You won’t find obsessive posts about guns.

Or high pitched hate screeds.

Other than that you’ll find what you’re looking for.

If not, then you’re not done looking.

(See what I did there? Try and do better reading out 2022?)