Beautiful exterior ... makes me wonder about the interior

Please scroll down to see today's dahlia, Lavender Ruffles, from Swan Island Dahlias.

An apartment house on NW 23rd Avenue, or maybe it's condos. I took this photo on March 12 with the Nikon CoolPix L12. I vividly remember when I first saw the building. Lamont, Leland and I had walked and walked and walked throughout the Pearl and the Northwest Hills one afternoon in 2004--when Mama and I were here on our first visit. The building was undergoing renovation. I wondered then how it would turn out, little knowing that in a little over two years we'd be living within walking distance. I love Portland!


Here's another one that I took with the Nikon D50 on May 9.


Today's dahlia, Lavender Ruffles. Facts from Swan Island Dahlias--Bloom: 12" Lavender, Bush: 3'

What's this about?

Half a block away, a house remodel is almost finished. The house was raised, a basement put in, and some additional square footage ended up in the attic/third floor area. It's being marketed as three separate condos, all for a good deal over $300,000, if memory serves. There is no parking.

How would you like to pay that kind of money for somewhere to live? With no parking? And your front door is situated like this?

You carry things down from street level to this 90-degree turn, down a few more steps and through the door. Small things. I can't see regular-sized furniture making it, though. There's even a low wall to the left of the stairs, see it in the next shot?


And I'm not going down the side yard and taking a look to see if there's a better entrance in the back yard. Nope. I respect private property, spatially if not always photographically. I'm satisfied, anyway, thinking this is a C-R-A-Z-Y-looking situation.

For you, a part of what I see walking to work

Friday morning as I walked part way to work, this view particularly appealed to me. It's about 7:05 AM, PDT, and we're looking east down West Burnside on the left and southeast down SW Morrison on the right. Some mornings when I walk down Everett to Third, I'm walking at the same downward slope you see on Burnside. If I decide to walk on Morrison instead, then go due south to take Salmon down to Third, I walk slightly uphill before it levels off and then slopes down towards the Willamette River. Either way I walk, I make good time, take a few photos, and catch the bus that takes me over the river to work. I love to walk in Portland, and I'm curious to see how I can work it out to walk as much as possible during the wet winter.

The pale peach-colored building in the intersection is one of two triangular-shaped buildings that I've noticed in the sharp-angled intersections on the south side of Burnside. At its closest end, it houses a pizza place; at the opposite end, there's a bar and grill. I believe the upper floors are apartments. The tall, many-windowed building behind it is the Civic, a brand-new condo building. In between it is the rust-colored shorter building, the Morrison. They represent an interesting concept, new to Portland, as reported recently in the Portland Tribune. You can read about it at http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=118945870998628300.

Here's a bit from Wikitravel about how Burnside and the Willamette River work to delineate parts of the city: Portland is divided into five sections. Burnside Street is the north/south split. The Willamette (pronounced will-LAM-et) splits Southeast and Southwest, but the river takes a turn north of Burnside. Since Mother Nature doesn't care much about straight lines, the city decided to split what would be the Northwest quadrant into Northwest (West of the river) and North (East of the River), then divide North and Northeast at Williams Avenue. All Portland addresses contain their designating sector inserted between house number and street name (i.e. 3719 SE Hawthorne Blvd.) This will make it easier to figure out where things are. If you hear Portlanders talking about Southwest or Northeast, they're probably talking about the section of the town rather than Arizona or Massachusetts.