Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Who is this man? He’s on the wall of an old building with Meier & Frank above the door. See him there to the right?

mf_bldg_colorful_man

This building, which looks to have been a Meier & Frank warehouse used during their years of operation in Portland—they sold out to Macy’s last year--takes up the block between 15th and 14th Avenues; I walk by on Everett--I don't know the name of the northernmost street for certain. One of these mornings, I'll have to leave the apartment early enough to explore.

How, I ask you, could I have walked by without taking a photo of this character? He appears to have been painted or printed on paper, cut out and plastered to the plywood covering the window. He's ended up colorful, exotic, romantic--a mystery.

092507_colorful_man_altered

Is he some character from an opera? A novel? A play? A figment of someone’s creative mind? Who knows? Give me your knowledge, or at least your best guess. Please and thank you.
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7 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 25, 2007 at 12:27 AM

    i think his more characters in one...from the opera ...

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  2. dotSeptember 25, 2007 at 5:56 AM

    I don't have a clue but it will be interesting to find out. He looks like a mixture of old King Cole and Johnny Deept (excuse spelling)in one of his pirate movies. I would like to see the picture up side down so I could tell more about the other head or whatever it is. lol

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  3. DentonSeptember 25, 2007 at 9:04 AM

    He is not the sort of guy I would want on the side of my building. I'll bet Meier and Frank will paint over him in the near future.

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  4. Ming the MercilessSeptember 25, 2007 at 9:15 AM

    At first, I thought he looked like the King in the playing cards. But then, it looked a lot more disturbing with the head of a young man in his hand.i

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  5. • Eliane •September 27, 2007 at 6:22 PM

    He looks like Dartagnan. You know, from the three musketeers. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Artagnan
    What do you think? no?
    Well, if it's not him, it must be one of his relatives.

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  6. LynetteSeptember 27, 2007 at 9:21 PM

    Thanks to everyone who came to visit and shared you thoughts as to who this man is. Since the blog is connected to www.orblogs.com, which is a group of Oregon blogs, I thought surely someone here in Portland would pop up with some pertinent information, but that's not happened. I do love y'all's ideas, though!

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  7. MarieSeptember 27, 2007 at 11:40 PM

    I walk by this building a lot and actually I have a very similar picture up on my blog. He's not the only one I've seen either. His twin used to be on the building on the corner of Broadway and Burnside. Strange, aren't they?

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