VanPortlander

Most days, my commute brings me past Fairly Honest Bill’s on the corner of MLK and Couch. It’s an interesting secondhand store with a wide variety of merchandise… but that’s not the interesting part. To me, the interesting part is the signage, some of which I offer up here:

Click to view larger on Flickr

If you give a Portlander a camera, and set them loose on the city, you’ll find a great set of images as a result. Last weekend, Bay Area photographer Thomas Hawk was in town and led a photowalk for several hours on Saturday afternoon/evening. Our group started out around 30 folks as we started at Pioneer Courthouse Square and dwindled to around half that number by the time we split up near the Coliseum. I had a great time, it was good to meet Thomas as well as several local Flickr folks such as Squid Vicious - that’s his shot of one of the beams on the Broadway Bridge up above. Everyone was asked to tag their photos on Flickr, you can see a bunch of the shots from the walk.

If your name is Morris, and you watched the Rose Parade from your taped-off area at MLK and Davis, please go remove your tape. It’s still there.

Not content to let Washingtonians get all the stupid driver news this week, last night a Canby, Oregon man must have decided it was payback time. He drove over to Vancouver to the Salmon Creek area and ignored the signs and barriers that have closed the Klineline Bridge over Salmon Creek. Instead, he drove past the road closed signs, through the standard barriers, and into a heavy concrete barrier at a high enough speed that it was displaced about 8 feet.

photo by Clark County Sheriff’s Office

According to the press release “Alcohol may have been a contributing factor…”

Police car with victim’s coat on the ground - click for more on Flickr

As mentioned in my last post, this evening I came across the scene of a bike vs. car hit and run accident in Southeast Portland at 11th and Oak. Fortunately the victim appeared not to have life-threatening injuries; she was talking and moving as she was treated and loaded into the ambulance.

I was surprised to only see one Portland Police car with two officers conducting the investigation. I guess with a hit and run with minor injuries and no real visible physical evidence (no debris in the road, no skid marks, etc) there wasn’t much on-scene investigation other than talking to the witness.

I’m curious to see if this gets much coverage either from mainstream media or from BikePortland. From what I can tell I was the only “journalist” on-scene.

I have a few more photos on Flickr.

I admit that I’m a big Kevin Smith fan, so when I saw this photo on Flickr yesterday I chuckled a bit, not realizing that we had a bit of Red Bank here in Portland, on the corner of NW 21st and Hoyt. Photo by Flickr user seventh.samurai, used by permission.

The neon signs on Interstate Avenue are fun to see and there are a group of folks who want to see the signs preserved; dieselboi blogged about it a few months ago over at Metroblogging Portland.

Today I noticed that Patricia and Matt over at the orange door took a walk down Interstate, photographing all of the neon signs. Check out their great set of photos.

I had a great time on Tuesday at Ignite Portland 2. If you weren’t there, you missed a great evening of ideas, networking, and fun.

I shot a couple hundred photos and have put around 50 of them online via Flickr. Check it out. It’s wrapped in bacon good.

View all of my Ignite Portland 2 Photos

Today, a bunch of folks stood in line so that they could register as domestic partners, and become a little less unequal.

Remind me again why it is that the government has an interest in who one partners with?

One of the side topics which comes up when discussing fare enforcement on TriMet is the fact that the MAX ticket machines have a record of being very unreliable. It’s not uncommon for all of the machines at a stop to be out of service.

click to view on Flickr - used via Creative Commons license

I saw this photo on Flickr, taken by Major Clanger. It’s a telling piece of information of a potential reason why the ticket machines are flaky. They’re running Windows 3.

I’m curious… even when it was new, was Windows 3 ever a good choice for an embedded system?