Just an old sweet song keeps Portland on my mind. #RCTID

19 x 13 Photograph by Mister Viddy

(From Wikipedia Entry)

The Laurelhurst Theater was built by Walter Tebbetts in 1923.  Tebbetts later built the Hollywood Theatre (1926) and the Oriental Theatre (1927).  In 1924, The Sunday Oregonian described the $30,000 theater as “one of the most up-to-date motion-picture houses in Portland’s suburbs.”  Charles W. Ertz was the building’s architect, and G.O. Garrison was the original owner of the theater, which had a $15,000 pipe organ and seated an audience of 700 people.  The immediate neighborhood at the time included the central eastside car (trolley) barns of the Portland Railway, Light and Power Company and Kerns Public School, and the restricted residential neighborhood of Laurelhurst was nearby.  The Sunday Oregonian published brief plot summaries for films scheduled to appear at the Laurelhurst. On March 15, 1925, the summaries for the week described Manhandled, starring Gloria Swanson; Monsieur Beaucaire, starring Rudolph Valentino, and North of 36, “the story of the first cattle drive and the fearless girl who showed the way.”

The original theater had a single screen. Periodic renovations included one advertised in 1938 that promised “ultramodern appointments and surroundings … sparkling and completely new.”  In 1949, the Laurelhurst closed briefly for another remodeling, and in 1953 management replaced the theater screen with an “ultra-wide curved screen.”  Eventual expansion to four viewing rooms with separate screens was not enough to compete successfully with the new mulitplex theaters built elsewhere in Portland in the 1980s.  Childhood friends Woody Wheeler and Prescott Allen purchased and renovated the theater again in 2000.

This is a single color screen print of the Bagdad Theatre in Portland, Oregon.

I am still reworking my Steel Bridge poster but here is the latest screen print.  Three color on Strathmore blue paper.  I have many excellent images of Portland and this is the first.

Shortly after my return from Albuquerque, New Mexico, an acquaintance of mine had told me about this run down industrial area in North Portland that runs along the Willamette River. So we got on our bicycles and pedaled out to St. John’s and then began a little journey along the railroad tracks down to this collection of abandoned warehouses. The area had a look that was a mix of post-war and post-apocalypse but it afforded me the opportunity to take a lot of interesting photographs. This is the second photograph in a series that I am developing. Along The Waterfront.

Aye, if and when I get off of my lazy ass I am planning on a slight change to the layout of I.Viddy.  Nothing major as I really dig this current theme and do not have the time to do a complete redesign of the site.  Or maybe I’ll just sit down at the table above, have several drinks and then procrastinate.  It’s still a few months away from summer so I’m entitled.

Rain and Portland are as natural as peanut butter and jelly. So when it came time to visit the shops along Southeast Hawthorne who was I to put it off for another day just because of a little rain? I took the photographs you see in this post while waiting on the Tri-Met bus 14 to take me across the river into the east side neighborhoods along Hawthorne. Granted, by the time I got home I was thoroughly cold and damp but my pride as an Oregonian prevented me from complaining. And in all honesty, I love this weather.

Today was spent down on Southeast Hawthorne in Portland and as you can tell from the photograph above, Portland is as weird as ever. It’s one hell of a way to diet and it certainly sounds effective, unless health and safety are a concern.