IF YOU’RE CRUISING AROUND PORTLAND, Oregon, and come across across a six-foot-tall cut-out of Patrick, the pink, portly starfish from SpongeBob SquarePants, chances are good that Mike Bennett left it there for you to find.

For the past few months, Bennett has been busy with plywood, paint, and power tools, speckling his front yard and the city streets with playful, oversized figures. It all started after a snowstorm, when he was noodling over his collection of Calvin and Hobbes books that his parents had recently shipped to him and thinking about a scene where Calvin makes a big snowman. Bennett hadn’t had a front yard in years, and wanted to figure out how to make it fun. What if the delight of some mounded-up snow could last all year, and never run the risk of melting?

He headed to Home Depot, came back with a jigsaw, and went to town on wood from a nearby ReBuilding Center. Bennett, who was once active on the short-video app Vine, where he recreated scenes from movies and TV with little paper dolls, began to fill the yard with pop-culture characters. “Familiar stuff brings more smiles to people’s faces,” he says.

And then he took the show on the road—within reason. “I’m a pretty big baby when it comes to trespassing,” he says, and he’s also careful to avoid damaging property or plants. He’ll sometimes fasten his wooden characters to light posts, trees, or telephone poles with a few hooks and twine. His information is printed on the back of the figures, so if someone gets in touch to say that they want one to come down, he can swing by and grab it. (So far, he says, he hasn’t encountered any issues.) To make it easy to keep an eye on things, he installed them along the routes he tends to follow each day as he drives around for his day job as an assistant for a real estate company. “They’re my babies now,” he says. “I like to check in on them.”

Bennett loves a good scavenger hunt, and invites people to go out looking for the figures he’s scattered around Portland. (He sometimes drops location hints on TwitterInstagram, or Reddit.) Taking a cue from a geocaching log, he affixed a little form to the back of each one. There, visitors can jot down their name, the date, and a positive thought.

Some of the signs also nod to culture and quirks that are more particular to Portland. The city famously hatched The Simpsonscreator Matt Groening, and some of the show’s characters borrow their names from Portland streets. Bennett decided to play that up by installing a cutout of Homer’s chummy neighbor Ned Flanders on one corner of NE Flanders Street. When he saw the street sign and made the connection, Bennett thought, “What? Come on,” he recalls. It just seemed too perfect to pass up. He’s also setting his sights on slightly more out-there local lore. “Oregon being the way it is, we’re into Sasquatch,” he says. By August, he hopes to make more than a dozen Bigfoot cutouts, each sporting different proportions and fur colors.

In the more immediate future, he’s planning to confetti the city with little cutouts of Diglett, the petite, pink-nosed Pokémon that sticks its head out of the ground. Bennett intends to make a brigade of the little guys—about 100 in all—with scrap wood he’s accumulated from his larger-scale figures. He’ll tamp them into dirt around the city over the course of June. Each creature will be about five inches tall, and anyone who finds one is welcome to adopt it and make their own yard or windowsill a little more wonderfully weird.

 

View the full article here at Atlas Obscura

TILE

“Always double-check your tile quantities and purchase more tile than you think you will need. We recommend 10–15 percent for waste and cuts,” says Megan Coleman, cofounder of local modern tile maker Clayhaus. She adds, “if you are going to go busy on your countertop, go simple on your backsplash, and vice versa. Only one can be the star.”

HOUSE-CLEANING

“Add cut lemons or limes to vinegar and let steep a month to make an aromatic natural cleaning concentrate,” says Gina Ross, owner of local housecleaning and organizing service Green Clean by G. “You can get creative and add mint, rosemary, or essential oils. Plus, she notes, the concentrate looks pretty sitting on a counter in a mason jar. Add a ¼ cup to a spray bottle filled with water or dump ¼ cup in your mop water—just don’t use vinegar-basedcleaners on marble, granite, or stone.

PEST CONTROL

Want to keep rodents out of your house? Brandon Clark, owner of Get Smart Rat Solutions, says to quit feeding backyard birds and squirrels. “A bird feeder is like cocaine for rodents,” he says. “If food is available year-round, [rats] will breed year-round—and two rats can produce 1,500 offspring in a year. It’s mind-boggling.” The time to get a pro involved? “As soon as you see something in the house,” he says. That means there’s already a breeding population underneath your house or in your attic.

ENERGY

“A home’s energy system is made up of individual components. Replacing windows without installing insulation or upgrading your heating system might not have the impact you’re seeking,” says Stephen Aiguier, founder of eco-friendly Green Hammer Design Build. “Hire an experienced firm that can help you prioritize energy-efficiency upgrades that will save you money, reduce your carbon footprint, and improve the health of your home.”

PAINT

“Painting is one of the easiest ways to transform space. But it’s very disruptive, and it always takes longer than you think.” says local painter and artist Michael T. Hensley of MTH Painting. “Don’t have your friends come over and do it for pizza and beer. People try to save money that way, and it [rarely] looks good. Take your time in choosing colors. Cleaning, especially kitchens and bathrooms, where there’s a greasy residue is important before you start painting. Paint the ceiling first, then the trim, then you cut in the walls. It’s easier to cut the wall into the trim than vice versa. Also, use FrogTape on the trim. It’s moisture activated, so it seals itself up when the paint hits it.” (No website, email mthpainting@gmail.com)

ORGANIZATION

“Organization is kind of having a moment, with everything going on with Marie Kondo,” says professional organizer Clementine Hacmac. “One of the things I believe in most is there’s not a single system for every person . Decide what works for [you]. I’m a big fan of organizing things in rainbows—like books. I love rainbowtizing. It always looks really beautiful and clean and super-intentional. And that’s one of the tricks of organizing: when it looks beautiful, you are more likely to keep it up. Getting rid of stuff doesn’t mean you’re losing anything. It means you’re opening the possibility to have only that which truly serves you in your life.”

PLUMBING

“Be mindful of your washing machine hoses,” says Craig Anderson, owner and vice president of Craig Anderson Plumbing. “They’re made of rubber. The rubber breaks down. The chlorine in the water, sunlight, heat, all that affects rubber in negative ways. When a washing machine hose fails, you’ve got, as a result, a flooded house. So keep an eye on those hoses. Make sure they are changed out every five to seven years. That could save you a lot of heartache.” 

GARDEN DESIGN

“Most of the time [people] buy one of this [plant] and three of those and one of that, but really you should be buying 20 of one thing,” says Peter Lynn, garden designer at Pomarius Nursery. “In order to prevent a lot of weeding and spraying or mulching, you overplant, and over time things weed out and you’ll enjoy them.” Lynn also says to let ’em be as much as you can: “The more you [walk] on the beds, the more you trample, the more you compact, the less it grows. You want to limit the amount of time you go in the beds if you can. What you’re trying to achieve is that within a year, you don’t see the ground anymore.” 

View the full article here at Portland Monthly

This winter may have been drier than last year’s, when record-breaking snow and rainfall brought wildflower superblooms to national parks and fields across the West, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to spot gorgeous blossoms this spring. As temperatures continue to rise, wildflower season is in full swing. Here are some prime spots to catch the blooms.

Washington

Set along the Puget Sound near Bellingham, Anacortes Community Forest Lands holds old-growth forests filled with native berry shrubs that bloom from February to August. Among these, Indian plum, red flowering currant, salmonberry, and red huckleberry are ones to watch for. Later in the spring and into summer, orange trumpet honeysuckle hangs from the trees overhead, and wild Lily of the Valley and coral root orchids blossom underfoot. The real treat is a trek through bald meadows on Fidalgo Island’s Sugarloaf Mountain, where hiking trails give views of spring gold, blue-eyed Marys, fawn lilies, Western buttercup, and red Indian paintbrush. Take a guided hike through the 2,700 protected acres, led by a local steward of nonprofit The Friends of the Forest.

Oregon

Tom McCall Preserve, 231 acres of grassland along the Columbia River Gorge, is home to 300 species of plants, and grants you stunning views of Mount Hood and the Columbia River. Every spring, starting in late February, it’s also home to one of the most incredible wildflower displays in the state. Keep an eye out for grass widows, prairie stars, shooting stars, lupine, and Indian paintbrush. The grasslands are also home to four plant species unique to the River Gorge—Thompson’s broadleaf lupine, Columbia desert parsley, Thompson’s waterleaf, and Hood River milkvetch. Catch the blooms along the Rowena Plateau, near the edge of the River gorge, along a 3.6-mile round-trip hike.

California’s golden coast has long been famed for its poppy-filled plains. Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, a state-protected reserve of Mojave Desert grassland in northern Los Angeles County, offers 8 miles of hiking trails through rolling hills of golden poppies,  lupine, and coreopsi, from mid-February to mid-May. Though National Weather Service and Park Service officials aren’t confident that rainfall will increase significantly enough in the coming month to warrant another superbloom, the reserve is known for consistent poppy displays each year.

Further north, Death Valley’s famous flower displays begin earlier in the spring at lower elevations, where desert gold, notch-leaf Phacelia, golden evening primrose, and gravel ghost dot foothills until mid-April. As temperatures continue to rise, upper desert slopes and canyons welcome desert dandelion, Mojave aster, indigo bush, and desert paintbrush.

Colorado

Colorado’s sweeping plains and mountainsides are prime for wildflower viewing, especially at the popular Roxborough State Park, 3,245 acres of wild land just southwest of Denver. Naturalist Ann Sarg suggests visiting the park to catch blooms in May, when natives like Nelson’s larkspur, nuttall violet, sand lilies, and mariposa lily bloom along paths like the Willow Creek trail. She also says some natives, like the spring beauty, have already begun to bloom, and that late-blooming varietals like porter aster and Liatris pop up later towards summer. Fellow naturalist Susan Dunn suggests arriving earlier in the morning for flower hikes in order to take advantage of cooler temperatures, and also recommends that visitors hop on the RoxRide, a five-passenger cart driven by a naturalist who can point out the blooms along the way during spring weekends.

Arizona

You might not expect wildflowers to bloom in the deserts of Arizona, but the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix showcases dry-weather flowers that can be found across the state. Prime viewing time in the gardens starts in early March, when they fill with desert wildflowers like firecracker penstemon, blackfoot daisy, and Mexican gold poppies, along with blossoming cact, which bloom along the popular Harriet K. Maxwell wildflower trail.

Just an hour outside of Phoenix, the Boyce Thompson Arboretum is a 323-acre state park committed to the study of drought-toleran, desert-happy plants from all over the world. Come mid-March, spring flowers like desert marigolds, brittle brush, and perry penstemon fill the park’s several gardens with color, and native milkweed attracts monarch butterflies. After April, the park’s collection of cacti, which include ocotillo, yucca, hedgehog, saguaro, and aloes, share their regal blooms.

 

View the full article here at Sunset

160607_TEST_Portland-Op-Amaya

PORTLAND, Oregon—Across Portland’s Albina district, chic cafes advertise pour-over coffee and delicacies such as blueberry basil donuts. On Mississippi Street, hollowed-out school buses and roadside stands sell vegan barbecue and bacon jam empanadas. The street signs read “Historic Mississippi,” a nod to the area’s century-old roots, but it’s increasingly difficult to find spots that don’t evoke the decidedly ahistoric hipster vibe that now makes Portland famous.

One notable exception is the neighborhood’s pre-K–8 school, Boise-Eliot/Humboldt—known as Boise for short. Sandwiched between a block of newly renovated bungalows and160607_TEST_Portland-Op-Orray a strip mall with a yoga studio and a combo bar and laundromat, the two-story red brick building hasn’t changed much in decades. Unlike the neighborhood’s new residents, a majority of its students are black and low-income. Many of their families have been priced out of the Albina area and relocated to outskirts of Portland, a move known as going “out to the numbers” because of those areas’ numbered streets. So the students take public transportation to attend Boise, a revered institution in Portland’s black community. Most newly arrived white families, meanwhile, transfer their children out of Boise into schools that they consider better—and which are definitely whiter.

When neighborhoods gentrify, schools often don’t follow—at least not nearly as quickly.
It’s a phenomenon playing out across America as middle-class white families move into urban neighborhoods that real estate agents might have once called “undesirable.” Think Harlem in Manhattan, Oak Cliff in Dallas, the Bywater in New Orleans, the South Loop in Chicago, or the Mission District in San Francisco. They may be hip destinations with attractive amenities, but most of their public schools don’t get the same love from new arrivals. The problem is particularly acute in Portland, which is already the whitest big city in America and growing whiter.

160607_TEST_Portland-Op-Davoisier… Despite the changes in the area, the student body remains a hair under 60 percent black and only 15 percent white. That’s almost opposite of the surrounding neighborhood, which according to the 2010 census is 63 percent white and less than 20 percent black (down from more than 50 percent black in the 1980s, and almost entirely black in the 1960s). School staff say the neighborhood has grown even whiter in the past six years, with the school demographics changing at a much slower rate.

Portland Public Schools previously allowed parents to enter their children into a lottery and select schools of their choice. Now, the district relies on a petition system that allows students to transfer with district approval—a requirement it said would prevent families from fleeing (mostly minority) schools with low enrollment. But the petition policy is lax. Parents affected by the system say they view it as an extra step, but not one that prevents them from getting their children into the schools they want.160607_TEST_Portland-Op-Aaliyah

This system allows many black students who’ve moved away to petition to attend Boise, but Bacon says even more simply fake their addresses—listing the home of an aunt or a grandmother who still lives near the school. “This school has always served Portland’s black community. They have relationships here—trust,” says Bacon. “The school has delivered for their relatives, and they want that for their kids.”

The entire article including larger photos and additional student statements can be found HERE on Slate.com

-26669323748e2973A West Linn mansion listed for $18 million comes with bidets, a Benihana hibachi table and bragging rights that Bruce Willis slept here.

It’s not the most expensive residential listing ever in Oregon, but the Mediterranean palace on 35 acres, named Villa de l’or (house of gold or mountains), is at the very top right now.

Listing agent Tina Wyszynski of Cascade Sotheby’s International Realty has been quietly trying to sell the ritzy compound at 1707 S.W. Schaeffer Road since November.

Four days ago, she listed it on the Regional Multiple Listing Service’s searchable real estate database, and on Wednesday, she’s inviting journalists to take a tour inside the mansion with marble floors, gold-colored fixtures and crystal chandeliers. Qualified buyers or their representatives can see it anytime.

The house, with 14 bedrooms (not to mention servant quarters) and 10 bathrooms, would be sold furnished. Furniture and decorative accessories cost more than $550,000 when new in 1996. Drapery and upholstery fabrics alone were several hundred dollars a yard.

A member of Wyszynski’s sales team, who asked not to be named, said they are looking for a very specific buyer: Perhaps someone who might want it as a boutique resort.

Or the home could be a “repository for art,” he said, for a deep-pocket collector who sees value in Oregon’s absence of sales or use taxes.-5d80dc4f7591db6d

Elaine Wynn, the co-founder of the Wynn casino empire in Nevada, avoided paying as much as $11 million in use taxes in her state by lending the $142.4 million Francis Bacon’s triptych “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” to the Portland Art Museum before shipping it to her Las Vegas home.

Most likely, Wyszynski will find a buyer outside of the state, since, according to research her team has conducted, there are only about 330 people in Oregon who have investment assets of $30 million or more. That’s the bottom line the team decided would be needed to purchase and maintain the 16,359-square-foot residence – larger than the Pittock Mansion — as well as the private soccer field, tennis court, gym, pool, pool salon and horse arena.

Unlike most extreme estates with a sprawling main house, this one doesn’t have detached guest houses or large outbuildings. “It’s not Hearst Castle,” in central California’s coast with casitas as large as 5,875 square feet, said the sales member.

But there is an enormous stone Tuscan-styled wine vault that can store imported bottles and estate wine made from grapes grown in four acres of vineyards.

Don’t worry if the family that built Villa de l’or will be struggling to find a replacement. According to the sales team, they have other homes “just like this one” over the world, including in London, England, and Nice, France.

The husband and wife attended Portland State University and have business interests in the area and donate to local causes, according to documents, but they are only here two weeks a year, said the sales team member.

The complete article and additional photos can be found HERE on Oregonlive.com

A new food cart pod, pub and a market-rate apartment building are likely on the menu for the Lents neighborhood after the Portland Development Commission approved the sale of a slice of property at the corner of Southeast Woodstock Boulevard and Southeast 93rd Avenue.

The PDC Board of Commissioners voted 5-0 Wednesday night to approve the sale of two parcels oflents land to Clackamas construction company Lisac Brothers Construction. The latter is planning two phases of development, the first of which would be a commercial building and a pavilion for a small food cart pod. According to information from PDC, an “affiliated entity” will occupy the commercial building and operate a restaurant and pub.

The second phase will be a multi-unit, market-rate apartment building.

PDC bought the two properties, which sit at the southeast corner of Southeast 93rd Avenue and Woodstock Boulevard in 2000 for $122,000 and $143,000. The agency is selling them to Lisac for $500,000. In April, the properties were appraised at a total of $469,000.

PDC spokesman Shawn Uhlman said the process now shifts to due diligence for the developer.

The project, according to PDC, falls in line with the agency’s five-year plan for the Lents Town Center.

“The proposed housing element of the project would help achieve community desires for a broad spectrum of housing choices within the Lents Town Center including new market rate housing,” PDC staff wrote in a report. “In addition, the project brings new private investment to the Lents Town Center providing new market comparables for other private investment opportunities in Lents … (It will also) provide much needed active uses along Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, and the food cart pod and proposed restaurant are uses identified by the community as highly desirable for the Lents Town Center.”

The proposed development is just one of a handful that PDC has been working to kickstart in recent months.

Original article can be found HERE on the Portland Business Journal Website

bike aptIn Portland’s Eliot neighborhood, a cycling-centric apartment building is wrapping up construction along Northeast Cook Street.

The mixed-use, 206-unit Cook Street Apartments is the largest complex in the North Williams Corridor and borders North Williams Avenue, a bike route that connects commuters over the Broadway Bridge directly into the City Center, about two miles away.

“The ongoing redevelopment of this area is starting to move toward mixed-use facilities, that’s kind of the trend in this zone right now,” said Aaron Rieck, the onsite project manager with Sierra Construction. “Also, it’s very cycling-centric — that’s part of the difference in the coding, they don’t require parking at all — it’s designed for cycling-centric commuting into town.”

… Cook Street Apartments was developed by Lake Union Partners, designed by LRS Architects and built by Sierra Construction. Its neighborhood is one area that has become more economically valuable than in the past due to its proximity to downtown.

Even though the site is on a bike route directly into downtown Portland, and zoning doesn’t require developers to build parking lots, Cook Street Apartments has parking for 146 cars and 252 bikes.

“In the grand scheme of things, everyone’s going to ride a bike,” Rieck said. “But there are still people who own cars and you end up in a condition where the overflow is moving into the neighborhood, taking up everyone’s spare spots.”

JULES ROGERS - The sculpted orb, made from bicycle gears, represents the cycle-centric buildings amenities and location.

JULES ROGERS – The sculpted orb, made from bicycle gears, represents the cycle-centric buildings amenities and location.

As for other amenities, the residents’ rooftop patio on the sixth floor has indoor-outdoor fireplaces, BBQs, huge sliding doors that connect a community kitchen to the outdoors and a restroom. Two plazas on the southern corners of the lot add landscaped greenery and artwork in the shape of a prominent sculpted orb made from bicycle gears…

The total project cost $30 million, including a little grant money from the Energy Trust of Oregon to add efficient lighting and low-flow water fixtures. At the peak of construction more than 140 workers were onsite, according to Rieck.

The U-shaped building cradles an above-ground parking lot roofed by metal racks that will soon be covered in growing vines. Handpainted murals of historical architecture in the neighborhood adorn the enclosed street-level parking lot.

… The market-rate units range from $1,270 for a small studio to $2,575 for a spacious two-bedroom. Thirteen of the units are already leased.

The entire story can be found HERE on the Business Tribune’s website.

 

Curb too close?  Dump too far?

Do you have items in your home that are difficult to dispose of because of their size and shape?  Neighborhood cleanups make disposing of bulky waste (old furniture, cat castles, etc.) easy.  Plus they cost less than fees garbagerequired at the dump and help to fund community activities like picnics, movie nights and more!  Eight different cleanups are scheduled April-May 2016 throughout SE Portland…

Click the link HERE for the cleanup calendar and the fine print, brought to you by SE Uplift.