67th and Foster

When we moved into this part of Southeast Portland umpteen years ago the corner of 67th and Foster Road, like most of the surrounding area, was a bit outdated.  On the southeast corner was a Keinow's Market, the Phoenix Pharmacy and a laundromat.  The Keinow's was the neighborhood market and you could actually see your neighbors there.  There was an old fashioned American style bakery on the premises and it was great to have a place within walking distance to get a fresh-baked cherry danish.  On other corners of the intersection were a furniture store and the old Rexall Drugstore building, come down in the world to become called Allen Video, really sort of a junk store selling VHS tapes and used telephones - the kind with a wire you plugged into the wall.  Its distinctive feature was the one-armed robot gorilla in overalls eternally pivoting and waving out front.  It was great to be able to tell people to "go out Foster until you see the one armed robot gorilla in overalls."  I went through my old photos a few weeks ago and found to my dismay I somehow neglected to take a single picture of the one armed robot gorilla in overalls.  Eventually it lost even that one arm and its ability to pivot, but a gorilla in overalls is still a great landmark.  At last it too went the way of the landline telephone, and Allen Video itself - gone in the mists of memory.

It is the opposite corner of which I wish to write today, of the Kienow's Market and Phoenix Pharmacy.  It was saddening to have the Kienow's close, for me mostly because of the bakery.  It was soon replaced by a Dollar Tree store, a national chain purveying shoddy goods for the lowest price.  Saddening, too, was the fact that the Phoenix Pharmacy, rather than promoting its unique services - pharmacy, post office, newsstand, etc., tried to compete with the Dollar Tree on its own turf, bringing in markdown items and shoddy goods of its own.  Of course it was doomed to fail, and be replaced by a store which raised our hopes but shortly dashed them in the manner I shall soon describe.  Behold the Save-A-Lot.

We walked over one Saturday afternoon to attend the gala grand opening of the Save-A-Lot.  There was a live band inside playing sixties hits, and out on the corner a union protest with a huge banner proclaiming the unfairness of the corporation.  We went in with fond memories of Kienow's and hopes for a neighborhood grocery store to take its place, but found instead a strange alternate universe.  The Savings of Save-A-Lot apparently came from carrying its own proprietary brands, found nowhere else.  Everything had strange names like Mrs. Freshly's and Bubba Cola, Bramley's and Coburn Farms.  Everything also had a kind of cheapness to it which did not inspire confidence.  The problem with shopping at Save-A-Lot was that it made me feel POOR.  It was a store for poor people and when I stepped through that door into the bleak interior and wandered the aisles looking at hillbilly food, I felt poor too.  When I go into the Dollar Tree to buy disposable razors I feel like I am entering the normal world.  When I went into the Save-A-Lot I was entering the hillbilly world, the po' folks universe, the place a cut below WalMart.  A flimsy, cheap-jack bargain world of unappealing crap - rubbery cinnamon buns, off brand soda, and ten pound bags of frozen fish sticks.

Note that I have been writing of Save-A-Lot in the past tense.  I walked over to the Dollar Tree yesterday to get another pack of ten Persona disposable razors to keep my George Brent mustache trim and fit - not because I really needed them but just to get out of the damn house and out into the even more damned blinding glare of hideous late summer sun.  Since I was there I thought I would go in and see if there was even one single thing in the Save-A-Lot I could possibly buy.  I found it semi-chaotic and nearly empty of products as it was in the process of closing, selling off the nearly inedible cheap grub for even more deeply discounted prices.  The type of folks who shopped there found it much to their liking and were resting armloads of bargain semi-foods upon their distended abdomens preparatory to dumping it into the cart.  I actually saw that.  The store manager seemed to be having quite a time, shouting almost continuously about the great deals to be had on that repulsive imitation nutriment.  I did a little search when I got home and found a statement from a corporate spokesperson saying their intention in closing 60 Save-A-Lot, Albertsons, and Acme stores was to cut costs and increase stockholder dividends.  Not to improve the company or provide better service; certainly not to sell better products.  It was truly a fitting culmination to my Save-A-Lot experience.

I rode over today and took a couple of pictures with my crummiest camera, also getting a few shots of this car entirely filled with crap except for a small space for the driver:

They were probably stocking up on pudding cups, canned sausages, barbecue flavor potato chips, and other items appropriate for ingestion while sitting in an automobile entirely filled with useless junk. What will become of the place is unknown - the laundromat was already closed, but there was no sign of the Dollar Tree closing unless they are keeping it a secret until the last minute.  Maybe instead of trying to peddle more cheap crap to poor people, trying to get a dollar each from a hundred people, somebody ought to try selling something good and get ten dollars from twenty people instead.  The next few years hold hints of vague promise for 67th and Foster, but we shall see.

PORTLANDIA MEETS THE CURSE OF CHIEF NIWOT

UPDATED NOV. 8 2012!! Welcome, new readers!

My current home city of Portland Oregon seems to be slightly better known to the world than many cities of similar size.  If people know anything at all about Portland, the one thing they do know is this - COLLECTABLE COMMEMORATIVE FIREARMS.  Right?  That's what really says Portland - a thousand dollar plus Mossberg 30-30 with decorative plaques screwed onto it that is so fancy you would never even shoot it - an object which utterly betrays its own primary function and is almost perfectly useless.  Strangely that really is very Portlandy, even if only by accident.  Why am I even writing such crazy things, you may ask.  Because of the latest Stupidest Advertisement which graced our doorstep yesterday - The Portland Heritage Rifle.  Here are clickable, enlargeable images of the wonderful thing:

As it says, "Portland has emerged from its muddy roots as a logging center and major seaport to become known as one of the most beautiful 'green' cities in the world.  It is this proud history that inspired us to include Portland into our Heritage Rifle special edition collection." Emphasis and grammatical error their own.  Except that Portland wasn't really that much of a logging center - the logs came through on the river but once the townsite was clearcut not a whole hell of a lot of logging took place here after the first fifty years or so. That's the sort of thing people think about Portland who don't actually know much about its real history.  I mean, it started off that way, but it didn't stay that way for long. Okay it was a logging center.  I admit it.  You just don't encounter the lumberjack theme here very much is all I am saying. But it wasn't really that much of a seaport since it is on a river and the sea is way off yonder thataway about a day's drive by log wagon - it was a port, yes, but a river port.  You kind of have to be on the sea to be a seaport.  It's true there was once a Lewis & Clark Centennial Pavilion here, a temporary Spanish Renaissance style structure built in 1905 which promptly vanished once the festivities ended, well over 100 years ago. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company originated in Portland, that is true, but its purpose was primarily to transport goods up the Columbia river, not the Willamette which is the river that actually flows through Portland - I am starting to quibble a bit here so I will just stop. Oh let's face it, this is all quibbling.  So what the hell.  What on earth did they get right on this distinctly Portlandy decorative collectable $200 down and $100 a month for an unspecified number of months unshootable firearm?  Eh?  This of course:

Portland's Aerial Tram!  Celebrated for its Portlandyness by absolutely no actual Portlanders, given appropriate pride of place on the rifle's BUTT, it is a folly and boondoggle built to connect two widely separated portions of the Oregon Health & Science University, which no average person ever has any reason to use. Significantly absent is any truly Portlandy scene, except for the 100 year old Steel Bridge dating way back to heritageous 1912. Even in the promotional photograph all iconic features are invisible or carefully covered by the gorgeous product.  Where is Portlandia, our beloved Fifty Foot Woman, reaching down as into the shattered roof of a seedy honky tonk to crush us in her vengeful grip?

 

Alas, nowhere.  Where is the Portland Oregon sign, a garish advertisement originally built in the 1940s for White Satin Sugar, to progress through various incarnations, its mercantile origins forgotten to become a beloved icon and garish advertisement for Portland itself, and its quaint miniature skid row of Old Town?

Carefully concealed behind the upper gun, that is where it is.  And who the hell is Chief Niwot?

The most wondrous thing about this glorious farce of advertising is the way it connects the two ends of my life - I was born in Fort Collins Colorado on October 11 1957, my birth heralded by a green fireball that lit the skies and vanished into the west.  There is a half-jesting tradition there of  The Curse of Chief Niwot (pronounced nye wot) - if you ever live in Fort Collins you will always return. I don't know anything else about Chief Niwot.  I lived there three separate times and now that I am determined never to return, it follows me.  Once or twice a year a ludicrous circumstance or ridiculous product or atrocious socio-political movement comes to my attention which is so absurd and deranged it can only come from Fort Collins as I did.  Like this ridiculously decorative, atrociously mark-missing rifle and, I assume, many similar products from American Legacy Firearms of Fort Collins Colorado.  Chief Niwot strikes again in his usual crazy way, bringing my silly life full circle.


ADDENDUM: Having taken five seconds to do a search on Chief Niwot, I find that his curse is associated with Boulder Colorado, not Fort Collins at all!  I was lied to, LABORING UNDER A CURSE THAT DID NOT EXIST.  Fort Collins, I am free of you forever!

UPDATE NOV. 8 2012!!  The Portland Heritage Rifle finally got some press in the form of an article on the Oregonian website.  Thanks go to Journalist Eric Mortenson  for covering this vital story and for showing the wisdom to pluck one of my finest quotes from this slapdash farce of an essay.  I am that howling blogger as you know. My wife said, "Taken out of context, your quote makes you sound like some kind of 'anti-boondoggle' crank."  Boondoggles have a bad reputation it is true, and how could anyone imagine the deep and abiding love I have for them?  Let the world think what it likes but my affection for them is strong and eternal.  I was startled to learn the actual two thousand dollar price tag for this wondrous product, and delighted to see a photo of a person who would really buy one - very much as I imagined, except I imagined him clambering out of a nine foot tall pickup truck with Tea Party bumperstickers in the parking lot of the Home Depot, a bluetooth phone dealy clipped to one ear.  I was just thinking of this fabulous firearm again the other day, and what I thought was, "I sure hope that is a Build On Demand kind of thing because I hate to think they had a couple hundred of them made..."  The fact is, it's only a hundred but still, what I continued to think was, "... because someday someone is going to find a whole stack of mysterious cases way in the back corner of the warehouse and when they pry one open they will say 'Who the hell ever thought this crazy thing would sell?'"  Looks like that is what may really happen, though none of us may live to see that day. As for the Curse of Chief Niwot - true or false, up he pops again in the pink and weeping form of cute/sad Abigail Evans, the "Bronco Bama" girl, resident of funny old Fort Collins Colorado, calling me to return to the sun kissed, snow-laden rolling plains of my birth, and cry.