Gorgeous night last night. You could pretty much smell the end of summer in the air, a development that I am pretty thoroughly resigned to after so many years living west of the Cascades. This morning, too: the fog rolling back towards the ocean; the cool blue sky; the sun a little lower than it was a few weeks ago.

This oddly compelling work of art is mounted high up on a telephone pole in southeast. Exactly the type of thing that makes the average day much more enjoyable for me. I'm not sure what "quadrant" is a reference to, other than the five (yes, five) sections of the city that we refer to as "quadrants". And it's not particularly accomplished or anything as a painting. But it made me stop and spend a few engaged minutes looking up at an otherwise nondescript pole.



Remember last winter when someone was posting those cryptic paintings on telephone poles downtown? (I posted a picture of one of them here weeks before a photo popped up in the In Portland section of the O.) And some city government knuckle-dragger actually managed to track the artist -er, criminal- down and charge them? *update: found the story*

Funny how one arm of the city is gushing over Richard Florida and his "creative class" pop sociology, while the other arm is crushing one person's attempt to add some whimsy and out-of-the-box dialogue to the urban environment. Actually, not funny.

Well, since I had to be at work today, and thus missed the Bridge Pedal (one of the minor highlights of my year), how about a few recent Keller Fountain shots instead?

On this day, the fountain was off, so instead of splashing around in the water everyone was climbing all over it. Oh, and in the auditorium across the street there was an old lady in a striking orange dress that I couldn't resist photographing.

The fountain is one of Portland's hidden gems and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of landscape architecture. One of these days I'll put together a more thorough post, involving flowing water and some of the history of the area.

Went down to the South Waterfront on Saturday for Ten Tiny Dances and found my attention wandering, as usual. It really is crazy that, only 5 years ago, there was just a vacant brownfield down there.