In case you were wondering, Mother Nature is still pissed at us. Feel free to see what caused me to make that obvious statement originally before reading on – or not. All will be clear soon enough.
I woke the other morning – yes, I was up before noon! – to find these pics of my beloved Park Blocks/front yard from a local news anchor on my Twitter feed.
Another of our North Park Block’s hundred-plus year old trees had fallen overnight. As you can see, it more tipped over after its roots basically failed to hold it in the ground. I mean, we’ve had a lot of rain the past couple of weeks…but not that fucking much rain.
Minimal upside, I suppose, could be that the building it fell onto is slated for demolition to make way for a hotel that will take up the park-facing half of the city block that it sits on. As soon as the other building on that half of the block is removed from the Historic Register.
Yeah, that part is kinda fucked up.
I walked past the site this morning after checking Angela into the “spa” for her repairs. It doesn’t look better by light of day.
The clean up isn’t done, obviously, but I’m surprised the building wasn’t more damaged. I guess that’s a testament to the masonry workers of the…19th century?
I guess the actual bright side here is that no one was hurt. This being Portland, home to the third largest homeless population in the country – behind NYC and SF, if you can believe that…we should not be on a population based list with cities of their size – we have urban campers on virtually every block in the close-in downtown area. Not every side of every block, but you’d be hard pressed to find a block without tents on at least one side. Not to mention RVs parked along the city streets for weeks at a time before being forced to move to another street.
That being the case, I’m glad these poor souls living just to the left of where the tree landed on the building weren’t harmed in the incident. But you can be damn sure they had the living daylights scared out of them.
Mother Nature is mad. At us…and with good reason. But I see no reason that the least among us should pay the ultimate or any physical price for the damage the wealthiest and more conspicuously consuming among us create.
That poor tree, though. I’m so sad for the ongoing damage our Park Blocks are sustaining. Everyone go buy an electric car!
atleastihaveafrigginglass 
That tree was doomed. No offense, but if the other historic place is in the same shape as what the tree fell on moving it to the crack house ghetto list isn’t such a bad idea. I’m surprised the facade wasn’t kept in place, the interior gutted and boutiqued
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There’s a place just on the other side of the river they did that to. And it looks amazing. So, yeah…I would have loved to keep a brick building versus whatever they end up putting up in its place. That said, the city did allow for three old brick warehouses on my block (75% of the block, mind you) to be torn down and turned into a Hampton. I was ready to move when it was announced – but the building actually looks good! It fits with the upscale industrial mix of this neighborhood quite well. So…fingers crossed?
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Portland TIMBERs
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Lol. Look who’s SOUNDERing off. 😹😹😹
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Touche!
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A hotel might be preferable to another retro condo or a new chrome and glass high rise for retired jocks and single female dentists.
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Speaking of dentists – regardless of their gender or relationship status – whenever someone tells me they’re going to the dentist, I ask if they’re going to have the cavity between their ears filled. Oops, sorry – Philled.
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🤣 years (many) ago when I ran away from Oklahoma I got a job at a commercial video studio that was the brainchild of and run by the guys who, at one time, ran the top FM radio station in the country. K101, Mother’s Family. Their logo was an old radio with Mickey Mouse gloves surrounded by a weed leaf. They were insane, and everything was joke fodder. I was fill up, fill dirt, fill in the blank, “buttercup” (fill me up), fill-ter, fill-omeena, fill-agree… It was spread around equally, all the way to little baby cheeses so what’s a guy gonna do?
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