NORTHWEST PORTLAND, NOVEMBER 12, 2024

My Northwest Portland stroll started on Burnside and 23rd.

This is the view looking across Burnside: The Envoy.

I met a guy who lived there.

He said it was great. That’s good enough for me.

To the left of the Envoy is Vista Avenue.

That’s what they call 23rd when it crosses Burnside and heads up into the West Hills.

I had a buddy who lived in one of these apartments with a balcony. (Hey Greg)

We would hang out and drink beer and watch traffic making the turn up Vista.

I had a place on 21st and Lovejoy. He was living more uptown.

My girlfriend and I would spend time on the balcony talking about Portland’s best places to live.

After we got married and had kids we moved to the suburbs. We weren’t the first to seek shelter out of town.

I went from a bike riding free spirit to a henpecked husband in no time.

Although I wasn’t really henpecked as much as giving way to someone who had better ideas for a better life together.

That’s what regular people do.

Others may feel attacked, devalued, to ignored for their dumb ideas.

Not me. I married a girl with values similar to mine. Maybe better than mine.

We both play the part of parents, partners, and playmates.

Northwest Portland is where we met in 1981, where we took walks. We share memories there.

Now I walk it out while she’s down the street checking things.

 

City Sidewalks, Busy Sidewalks

Quality Pie was a regular stop back in the day; now it’s a ‘walk by.’

‘Portland loses another dining institution when Quality Pie, a 24-hour haven for hipsters, scenesters, scamsters, hamsters, rock stars (pre- and post-nova), street people, alcoholics in various stages of recovery, poets, gamers, insomniacs and other assorted creatures of the night, serves its final cup of joe.

 

First it closed, then sat empty, now this. I’d bet it’s part of a Good Sam expansion.

And I’d lose that bet.

But it was sold in 2019 with plans for apartments. Five year later and no ground broken?

NW 23rd has landmark buildings to model new apartments after.

Not too far away on the other side of the street:

Or it will be another big box with modern twists.

 

Along with the variety of buildings up and down 23rd, the standout is the amount of trees lining the street and running up and down every street that crosses it.

I took this picture for the golden leaves while some young woman watched me.

Woman: Do you like leaves?

Me: The ones I don’t have to pick up. I’ve got huge trees on my property that are carpeting the land.

Woman: You like trees, I can tell.

Turns out she was representing a tree planting program in Portland.

She said she was a professional arborist, so I asked some tree questions and she gave professional answers, such as, “I’d need to know more about the land and the trees on it to make good suggestions.”

 

Big Tree Of Life Question For Northwest Portland

“How can you convince someone new to planting trees that they’re doing more than digging a hole in the ground?”

I asked the question and followed up with the promise of a $10 contribution to her cause for a good answer.

She said she wasn’t allowed to take cash, that she was asking for a membership in her group, that I could sign up and contribute that way.

So, in review, there I was on a city sidewalk offering cash to a young woman. That’s when things took a turn.

Woman: I haven’t had people dig at me the way you are and I need to talk to others. Thank you for your ideas.

And that was it. I didn’t up the reward for answering the question by whipping out a couple of twenties.

How can you convince someone that planting a trees is more than digging a hole?

I also didn’t go into an extended reminisce about living in the neighborhood before it gentrified, how it felt like a real city street instead of a mall with the roof off.

Northwest Portland is a place to shop, eat, drink, maybe get an apartment down the line.

The wife and I talked about it. It has the European model of commercial on the bottom, residence on top.

Instead of driving two miles to get out of a suburban neighborhood to anywhere, we could walk two blocks.

The plus side of living out of town is we didn’t have to board up our windows in case the election went the other way.

City living includes a mix of people who act out on their impulses, like breaking windows in protest.

Instead of complying with the Home Owners Association rules about breaking windows, rioters do what rioters do.

If they decided to do more productive things, how would you explain to them that planting a tree is more than digging a hole in the ground?