Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Centennials

The Oregonian’s Janie Har wrote an article last week arguing that all the centennials we’re seeing around town are in part due to something that happened more than a hundred years ago – the Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905, which, she says, drew a great deal of businesses here, encouraged migration to Portland, and helped the city define itself. As you know, I’m in the business of recommending books, and I took this as an inspiration to recommend a few books about the things we’re currently celebrating for having started 100 years ago (or 105!):

I’ll start with the obvious topic, the exposition itself. Local historian Carl Abbott’s readable account, The Great Extravaganza: Portland and the Lewis and Clark Exposition will get you started. If you’re looking for a scene-setter, or you want a sense for how foreign the Portland of 1905 might seem to us 21st century folk, this is the book for you. Abbott takes readers through the whole story of the exposition, from the idea stage through the planning and building of the site, to the four and a half months of festivities, right through to the tear-down of the buildings and the settling of financial accounts afterward. Probably the most useful elements of the book, though, are the copious photographs (including many aerial shots of the city and the exposition grounds) and the stories of people’s experiences planning, working at, and visiting the fair. It becomes very clear, reading this book, that a lot has changed in Portland, and in the world around us, since 1905!

Perhaps the most visible Portlander celebrating its 100th birthday this year is the Hawthorne Bridge. The bridge is being honored through August 8th with the Portland Bridge Festival. And what’s on everyone’s reading list? Sharon Wood Wortman’s Portland Bridge Book. I’ve touted this book before, so you may already know that it’s a great place to learn the detailed history of each of our Willamette River bridges, and examine a variety of lovely photographs and technical drawings – but now is the perfect time to give it a read.

History buffs who like to get their exercise will appreciate Laura O. Foster’s Portland City Walks – a collection of Rose City tours that focus on local history and lore. Several walks highlight city features that are just reaching the centennial mark: walk #1 winds through Port of Portland facilities on Swan Island, walk #2 goes past Jefferson High School; and walk #6 takes you by the Jantzen factory at NE 20th & Glisan. Foster’s earlier guide, Portland Hill Walks, features a walk through the former town (now neighborhood) of Linnton, which is also celebrating its hundredth birthday this year.

How the Ball Bounces - Basketball As an Oracle of Self-Knowledge

After a dry spell the Portland Trail Blazers are back in the playoffs. This year's impressive Game 1 win over the Phoenix Suns was enough to remove some of the sting from 2009's first round exit at the hands of the Houston Rockets. Basking in the glow of that victory had many Blazer fans feeling optimistic about the team's championship potential in the years to come. After a season plagued by injury (including potentially career threatening knee injuries to both the centers that Portland started the season with and a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered by head coach Nate McMillan while scrimmaging with his injury-depleted team) the team and fans could be excused for taking any opportunity to feel excited for the future or to wax nostalgic about past glories.

Of course, what passage in Blazer history could eclipse their (thus far) one championship season? Matt Love's third installment in his Beaver State Trilogy, Red Hot and Rollin': a Retrospective of the Portland Trail Blazers' 1976-77 NBA Championship Season captures all the iconic (and often surreal) images of this championship run, literally. Included with the book is a DVD copy of Fast Break a 1978 documentary about the Blazers' 76-77 season. Filled with stunning visuals such as Bill Walton riding his bike along the Oregon Coast and addressing a camp full of youthful hoopsters on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation or Maurice Lucas increasing his lung capacity by holding his breath underwater, Fast Break is worth the price of admission alone. The film was shown for a week in Portland after its completion before being virtually forgotten until the publication of Red Hot and Rollin'. Sadly, film maker Don Zavin passed away a few years ago but this interview with co-director Mark McLeod provides some in-depth detail about the production of such an unusual documentary.

The passion that even the most committed Blazer fan feels for their team, Bill Simmons feels for all things NBA. His most recent work, The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy, is a love letter to the NBA in which Simmons expounds on and re-imagines all things basketball; the Basketball Hall of Fame becomes a five-level pyramid with only the finest players occupying its most elite level, the long standing debate over who was the better player, Wilt "The Stilt" Chamberlain or Bill Russell, is finally resolved and the "secret" of basketball is revealed by, of all people, Isiah Thomas (psst... the secret is that Basketball is PEOPLE). Simmons is fiery writer who uses whit and charm to engage the reader but the most attractive quality of this work is the sincere love of hoops with which he writes. This makes The Book of Basketball a worthy and enriching read for anyone who cares to absorb vibrant and powerful enthusiasm, not just basketball fans.

At first glance, with its glossy, modern images and quirky styling, Freedarko Presents the Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: Styles, Stats and Stars in Today's Game seems an ironic conflagration of obscure factoids and opaque whimsy but there is something deeper represented here. Freedarko started as a blog and Freedarko Presents captures much of the free-wheeling and playful sensibility that characterized that incarnation. Drawing inspiration from, and paying homage to, the most charismatic personas of the NBA's past and present (be they famous or not) Freedarko Presents could be accused of playing into the cult of personality that some feel has made us a celebrity obsessed society. Thankfully, threads of peculiar insight and subversive creativity flip this equation on its head. Instead of the passion of the fan empowering the superstar, Freedarko Presents imagines a universe in which basketball trivia becomes an oracle of self-knowledge. To know what makes our favorite, and most despised players, great is to know the source of greatness in ourselves. Bearing in this in mind, hoping for playoff success in 2010 for the Portland Trail Blazers might be a way of exploring our own potential. Fingers crossed...

Buses and Streetcars

There are many changes afoot in our local public transportation system. Citing revenue problems, TriMet is planning cuts to bus service on many neighborhood routes. But, at the same time, plans are shaping up for the new pedestrian/bicycle/transit bridge, and TriMet has decided to use $1 million in federal stimulus money to create new bicycle parking. The newly re-designed downtown Portland bus mall is nearly done and is open to car traffic, but drivers are having trouble understanding and following the new traffic rules on SW 5th and 6th streets. And, what about the rest of the country? The American Association for Public Transportation released a survey this week reporting that transit ridership saw a 4% increase between 2007 and 2008.

I ride the bus every day (I've never owned a car) and people sometimes ask me what it's like to use the bus as my primary mode of transport. Well, you have to be prepared for some inconveniences – buses can be a little slow, sometimes they're too warm or too hot or kinda stinky, and occasionally I have to stand in the aisle instead of getting a seat – but on the whole, I love being a bus rider. I never have to parallel park. I am familiar with people in my neighborhood who I'd never meet if I didn't ride the bus. There are lots of advantages! Portlander Kate Lopresti is another avid bus rider, and her zine The Constant Rider chronicles her experiences commuting by bus, and her travels using other forms of public transit. Lopresti's observations are astute, her instructions for fellow riders are sound, and her wit is very dry indeed. The Constant Rider Omnibus collects numbers 1-7, and covers subjects as diverse as fellow passengers who are drunk, “celebrity” sightings of bus drivers going about their lives, and “I saw you” personal ads from folks who spotted someone hot on the bus. Issue number 8 is also worth reading; it is billed as an “Industry Insider” and presents the public transit employee's perspective on things. Lopresti read from her work at the library last year; if you missed it be sure to listen to the podcast!

Before the bus was the urban public transportation workhorse, streetcars were the stars of the show. Portland's first streetcars were horse-drawn, and they went into service on SW 1st Ave. in 1872. The first electric streetcars arrived in 1889, and they were a major element of the city's transportation system until the Great Depression in the 1930s. If you're ready to read about the whole saga, I can heartily recommend Fares Please!: Those Portland Trolley Years. Author John T. Labbe provides a truly comprehensive history of the companies that built and ran the streetcar lines and the impact the streetcars had on life in the city. The book is richly illustrated with historic photographs, and maps of the different trolley lines.

And if it's street car pictures you're really after, don't miss Portland's Streetcars by Richard Thompson. This slim volume is all pictures all the time – from the Rose City's first streetcars in the 1870s to today's MAX light rail.  Each photograph is accompanied by a brief caption, but essentially Portland's Streetcars is a visual history. It's actually part of a series of books of historic photographs of trains called Images of Rail – one of the other volumes in the series focuses on railroads in the Columbia River Gorge.

Walking at Home and in History

When people start talking about taking radical steps to reduce their personal carbon emissions, or to change their transportation habits to help the environment, it seems like usually they're talking about switching driving for biking. But what about the most environmentally low-impact transportation method of all, walking? Well, a recent article at the Sightline Institute's blog The Daily Score, there's a fascinating article which talks about two recent academic studies exploring the impact walking more can have on carbon dioxide emissions, our national dependence on foreign oil, and of course, our own bodies – as well as another study that looks at how city streetscapes and urban layout affect our ability and interest in walking for transportation. Pretty heady stuff!

Like many of you, dear readers, I live in Portland, where the city has an entire office devoted to facilitating a wide array of transportation options, including walking. They're serious about this – they promote walking for pleasure, but also for more mundane tasks like going to the grocery store and commuting to work. So maybe the Portland area is ahead of the curve when it comes to walking more. But I think you'll find that there's lots of fascinating reading on the topic of walking, even to those of us who are already avid promoters of walking as a part of everyday life. Here are a few suggestions:

First off, let's consider how walking has affected people and communities throughout history. Rebecca Solnit's eloquent Wanderlust: A History of Walking. Solnit considers different kinds of walking-related activities that people engage in (e.g., political marches, religious pilgrimages, and backcountry hikes), and examines depictions and uses of walking in literature, science, and the arts. All in all, the book is a fascinating exploration of why we walk, and how walking has shaped human cultures.

Portland has many hills, and if you're up for it, they make great places to walk. Laura O. Foster's Portland Hill Walks: Twenty Explorations in Parks and Neighborhoods makes a great guide. When I took the Alameda Ridge Loop walk with a friend we were blown away by how many nearly-invisible public stairways we got to walk up and down – seriously, we would never have noticed many of them without Foster's instructions! She provides a fascinating array of neighborhood historical information for each of her recommended walks, as well as practical tips like the location of bathrooms, drinking fountains, and restaurants likely to provide a good lunch. If you like Foster's style, you might want to check out her more recent effort, too: Portland City Walks: Twenty Explorations In and Around Town. Or, you could look at one of the dozen or so other guidebooks of walks around Portland.

Like its title indicates, Car Sick: Solutions for Our Car-addicted Culture is an instruction book for how to reduce traffic congestion, the stress of commuting by car, and air and water pollution by decreasing usage of private cars for transport. Author Lynn Sloman devotes a chapter to "Soft solutions to de-motorize the rush hour" (pages 61-75), which includes creative ideas like the "walking bus" – a group of kids walking to school together, with a pull-trolley to carry their backpacks. The book is more than just practical ideas, though – it's full of success stories from cities around the world meant to inspire individuals and neighborhoods to take baby steps to reduce their car use.