Portland Day Three
Aug. 19th, 2016 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadnessBut before that I'd like to say I survived another day of of meetings. I don't remember much except for this which was cool. One of the education prof's just got back from Rio where her son placed 9th in the world for his weight class of Greco-Roman wrestling (and the highest score for an American). That is really great.
I did go briefly to the welcome back picnic. It rained. I think I'm in FL because it has rained every afternoon since I got here nearly a week ago and it doesn't cool down or become less humid. So it was hot enough to make me sick so I left early. My chair texted me that I won one of the drawings...a supersoaker?!? I'm not sure why that was a gift or what the hell I'm going to do with it. Stalk the cat?
Day three I was on my own and I was going to do a grayline hop on hop off trolley but now that I was familiar with the train line and found out that, in theory, the street car could take me from Powell's books to the hotel AND Washington park had a free shuttle to all things in Washington park I decided since everything I wanted was in the park to just go on the train and forget the 35$ trolley.
It worked out fine. I went to Hoyt arboretum (which opens at 5 AM since everything else didn't open until 10) and walked around looking at trees. It was very peaceful. From there I went to the Japanese gardens. I really wanted to see them and thankfully they had a shuttle to the top because the walk up was insane but once there: So beautiful. They're adding to it but I won't get to see that. I just wandered the acres for a few hours taking all the pictures, oh so many pictures. I can't pass a lantern without a picture. I did get some holiday gifts for people there including myself. I bought a Jizhou statue made of volcanic ash for the garden (now in my luggage hopefully not breaking as I type this in the airport).
I went back to the rose garden for a while then caught the shuttle back to the train. Once I got back downtown things went sideways. I got lost looking for Moonstruck cafe and the Adler street food truck pod. Never found either. Finally staggered into another food truck pod (which I learned later that night was all the way in freaking old town. I had gotten many blocks off track). Now I'm hot and pissy. I can't find my way back to Pioneer square. Nobody can give directions. Even the people with the phones. We watched on Waves as it give one set of directions then flipped 180 and we hadn't moved.
I FINALLY get back to the square, sweating like a horse and sick from the heat. I get to the street car easily and get to Powell's books. I loved it. It's SO big, broken into color coded book sections and SO packed. You'd think no one here has heard of ebooks. Hurray! I loved that they even had a LGBT YA section with an end cap full of highly recommendeds. I've never seen that anywhere else (where LGBT stuff is usually well hidden and LGBT YA non-existent.) I did buy a couple books but the cashiers all told me when I asked that you could NOT get on the street car to the convention center (but the desk clerks at the hotel said yes).
I should have listened to my paper map and the hotel desk clerk. Instead I stumbled off looking for the Max line train again, Get lost again. Got two old women into an argument over who was right giving me directions and finally a young girl steps in and gets me there, right on the street car I should have taken directly in front of the book store. Now I'm hot, sick and exhausted and I've yet to go on the ghost tour!
So I rested up for the evening. I went on the Beyond Bizarre Haunted Portland tour because I thought to myself hmmm, know what sounds like fun? A walk through the seedy-ass side of town at night. It was only two train stops from my hotel (and VooDoo donuts are in that part of town). I first when to dinner at Hobo's which is in one part of the old Merchant Hotel (which was a full block in size). It's been a hotspot for 25 + years and my chevre quesadilla was yummy as was the coconut prawn with cucumber-wasabi dipping sauce. Though the homeless took the name too much to heart as they were everywhere, You couldn't even walk the street into the food places there.
Anyhow the tour started in the Merchant Hotel and really it was strongest there. They gave us all EMF readers so that was fun. They know of three hauntings, Nina who was a prostitute working there back in Portland's bad old days (which were so very bad it seems. Even the cops were utterly corrupt working more like the mafia than law enforcement). Nina had tried to complain about conditions and cheating at gambling and she was thrown down the elevator shaft (now in the Pizza place). She's seen in all parts of the hotel including the basement which did have Shanghai tunnels. It was an opium den back in the day and up to the 80s it was a heroin shooting gallery. There is one guy known to have died there but has only been captured by mediums as saying it's a bad place there and they should get out. There is also Sam who likes to take stuff. In calling Nina's name, my EMF meter pegged and it felt like someone was there with us. Also creepy was the story that the morgue next door stored embalming solution. People broke in thinking it was beer and 20 people died. Another enterprising man took the bodies thru the Shanghai tunnel and sold them as 'drunk sailors'
Amazingly I forgot the next story (I can see the picture but no idea what that building was). Then came the Roseland theater where the owner was counterfeiting tickets (to sell double the amount) then murdered his accountant and buried his body in the woods. He was found guilty of some crime but didn't spent much time in jail. As for the ghost, it's a 'cinema in time' haunting, constantly running through the building as he ran from his killer in life, the scene repeating again and again.
Then came the Benson Hotel which is still a high end hotel made by a timber baron who wanted to own a hotel. Benson was known also for putting in the 'Benson Bubblers” water fountains (strange ones) that allow for free water because back in the day to get water you had to order a beer and whiskey too and his workers were always kicked in the ass. The haunting in the hotel is Benson but the really interesting thing is that Benson was part of the Spiritualist movement and all the wood is the now extinct Caspain (Cascade?) walnut which they believed absorbed and gave back positive energies. The wood is worth 200 million. I did get spikes on the stairs but that could have been wiring.
Then came another hotel (forgot the name) that's haunted by a tail less cat and the green lady. Then Kelly O's bar which is plagued by the sound of children. From there we hit two parking lots in the oldest part of town before we got there though we walked past the Club Rouge (strip club) ad the guide said when the tours started there was nothing triggering the EMF readers but a couple years ago a guy was knifed to death in the street by a gang and ever since that corner is thick with bugs, the emf spikes and plenty of trouble happens there, the cops always getting called down there. Sure enough the EMF pegged red, there were bugs everywhere (and literally nowhere else the entire walk) and it felt like walking through molasses as it poured down your throat.
As for the lots, they've been looking for the old Native American burial sites (which in theory) were moved. The first I didn't feel much even though it faced the old (and corrupt) police station on one side and the building that housed the Chinese Tong on the other (they tended to work together, especially during prohibition.) In theory the scaffold for killing prisoners was in that lot. I'd like to have seen more evidence of that but it's feasible.
In the next lot, I'm not sure it's an Indian graveyard but something was very wrong with it. I felt awful, could taste vomit. The mediums have said they've seen 'a white shroud and black water' (great book title there) which could have been cholera. Cholera would explain what I felt. I felt better when we moved away.
Then came Dan and Louis's oyster bar where one of the former owners still worked the till. Then we ended up at Voodoo Donuts where our guild has prearranged a dozen donuts. I got one that tasted like grapes He gave me the mango tango because it was extra. It was a fun time.
Hoyt Arborteum - beeches
More beeches
being eaten by ferns
Thought this looked neat
The Japanese Garden
The Chisen kaiyu shiki niwa the strolling pond garden
The zoki no niwa The natural garden
The yatsuhashi the zig-zag bridge
An art display not yet finished
The karesansui the sand and stone zen garden
The hira niwa the flat garden thats supposed to be a sake cup and sake gourd
And some of my favorites from the rose test garden Candy Spelling (love the blossom)
Favorite color, Twilight Zone
most fragrant, Fire Fighter
Pioneer Square Courthouse
Powell's Books
A mural I liked
I did go briefly to the welcome back picnic. It rained. I think I'm in FL because it has rained every afternoon since I got here nearly a week ago and it doesn't cool down or become less humid. So it was hot enough to make me sick so I left early. My chair texted me that I won one of the drawings...a supersoaker?!? I'm not sure why that was a gift or what the hell I'm going to do with it. Stalk the cat?
Day three I was on my own and I was going to do a grayline hop on hop off trolley but now that I was familiar with the train line and found out that, in theory, the street car could take me from Powell's books to the hotel AND Washington park had a free shuttle to all things in Washington park I decided since everything I wanted was in the park to just go on the train and forget the 35$ trolley.
It worked out fine. I went to Hoyt arboretum (which opens at 5 AM since everything else didn't open until 10) and walked around looking at trees. It was very peaceful. From there I went to the Japanese gardens. I really wanted to see them and thankfully they had a shuttle to the top because the walk up was insane but once there: So beautiful. They're adding to it but I won't get to see that. I just wandered the acres for a few hours taking all the pictures, oh so many pictures. I can't pass a lantern without a picture. I did get some holiday gifts for people there including myself. I bought a Jizhou statue made of volcanic ash for the garden (now in my luggage hopefully not breaking as I type this in the airport).
I went back to the rose garden for a while then caught the shuttle back to the train. Once I got back downtown things went sideways. I got lost looking for Moonstruck cafe and the Adler street food truck pod. Never found either. Finally staggered into another food truck pod (which I learned later that night was all the way in freaking old town. I had gotten many blocks off track). Now I'm hot and pissy. I can't find my way back to Pioneer square. Nobody can give directions. Even the people with the phones. We watched on Waves as it give one set of directions then flipped 180 and we hadn't moved.
I FINALLY get back to the square, sweating like a horse and sick from the heat. I get to the street car easily and get to Powell's books. I loved it. It's SO big, broken into color coded book sections and SO packed. You'd think no one here has heard of ebooks. Hurray! I loved that they even had a LGBT YA section with an end cap full of highly recommendeds. I've never seen that anywhere else (where LGBT stuff is usually well hidden and LGBT YA non-existent.) I did buy a couple books but the cashiers all told me when I asked that you could NOT get on the street car to the convention center (but the desk clerks at the hotel said yes).
I should have listened to my paper map and the hotel desk clerk. Instead I stumbled off looking for the Max line train again, Get lost again. Got two old women into an argument over who was right giving me directions and finally a young girl steps in and gets me there, right on the street car I should have taken directly in front of the book store. Now I'm hot, sick and exhausted and I've yet to go on the ghost tour!
So I rested up for the evening. I went on the Beyond Bizarre Haunted Portland tour because I thought to myself hmmm, know what sounds like fun? A walk through the seedy-ass side of town at night. It was only two train stops from my hotel (and VooDoo donuts are in that part of town). I first when to dinner at Hobo's which is in one part of the old Merchant Hotel (which was a full block in size). It's been a hotspot for 25 + years and my chevre quesadilla was yummy as was the coconut prawn with cucumber-wasabi dipping sauce. Though the homeless took the name too much to heart as they were everywhere, You couldn't even walk the street into the food places there.
Anyhow the tour started in the Merchant Hotel and really it was strongest there. They gave us all EMF readers so that was fun. They know of three hauntings, Nina who was a prostitute working there back in Portland's bad old days (which were so very bad it seems. Even the cops were utterly corrupt working more like the mafia than law enforcement). Nina had tried to complain about conditions and cheating at gambling and she was thrown down the elevator shaft (now in the Pizza place). She's seen in all parts of the hotel including the basement which did have Shanghai tunnels. It was an opium den back in the day and up to the 80s it was a heroin shooting gallery. There is one guy known to have died there but has only been captured by mediums as saying it's a bad place there and they should get out. There is also Sam who likes to take stuff. In calling Nina's name, my EMF meter pegged and it felt like someone was there with us. Also creepy was the story that the morgue next door stored embalming solution. People broke in thinking it was beer and 20 people died. Another enterprising man took the bodies thru the Shanghai tunnel and sold them as 'drunk sailors'
Amazingly I forgot the next story (I can see the picture but no idea what that building was). Then came the Roseland theater where the owner was counterfeiting tickets (to sell double the amount) then murdered his accountant and buried his body in the woods. He was found guilty of some crime but didn't spent much time in jail. As for the ghost, it's a 'cinema in time' haunting, constantly running through the building as he ran from his killer in life, the scene repeating again and again.
Then came the Benson Hotel which is still a high end hotel made by a timber baron who wanted to own a hotel. Benson was known also for putting in the 'Benson Bubblers” water fountains (strange ones) that allow for free water because back in the day to get water you had to order a beer and whiskey too and his workers were always kicked in the ass. The haunting in the hotel is Benson but the really interesting thing is that Benson was part of the Spiritualist movement and all the wood is the now extinct Caspain (Cascade?) walnut which they believed absorbed and gave back positive energies. The wood is worth 200 million. I did get spikes on the stairs but that could have been wiring.
Then came another hotel (forgot the name) that's haunted by a tail less cat and the green lady. Then Kelly O's bar which is plagued by the sound of children. From there we hit two parking lots in the oldest part of town before we got there though we walked past the Club Rouge (strip club) ad the guide said when the tours started there was nothing triggering the EMF readers but a couple years ago a guy was knifed to death in the street by a gang and ever since that corner is thick with bugs, the emf spikes and plenty of trouble happens there, the cops always getting called down there. Sure enough the EMF pegged red, there were bugs everywhere (and literally nowhere else the entire walk) and it felt like walking through molasses as it poured down your throat.
As for the lots, they've been looking for the old Native American burial sites (which in theory) were moved. The first I didn't feel much even though it faced the old (and corrupt) police station on one side and the building that housed the Chinese Tong on the other (they tended to work together, especially during prohibition.) In theory the scaffold for killing prisoners was in that lot. I'd like to have seen more evidence of that but it's feasible.
In the next lot, I'm not sure it's an Indian graveyard but something was very wrong with it. I felt awful, could taste vomit. The mediums have said they've seen 'a white shroud and black water' (great book title there) which could have been cholera. Cholera would explain what I felt. I felt better when we moved away.
Then came Dan and Louis's oyster bar where one of the former owners still worked the till. Then we ended up at Voodoo Donuts where our guild has prearranged a dozen donuts. I got one that tasted like grapes He gave me the mango tango because it was extra. It was a fun time.
Hoyt Arborteum - beeches
More beeches
being eaten by ferns
Thought this looked neat
The Japanese Garden
The Chisen kaiyu shiki niwa the strolling pond garden
The zoki no niwa The natural garden
The yatsuhashi the zig-zag bridge
An art display not yet finished
The karesansui the sand and stone zen garden
The hira niwa the flat garden thats supposed to be a sake cup and sake gourd
And some of my favorites from the rose test garden Candy Spelling (love the blossom)
Favorite color, Twilight Zone
most fragrant, Fire Fighter
Pioneer Square Courthouse
Powell's Books
A mural I liked
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no subject
Date: 2016-08-21 05:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-21 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-21 09:59 pm (UTC)As for the rest, it sounds like a fun day (aside from getting lost).
Candy Spelling rose is a pentangle, at least the one you posted. That's very cool. :D
no subject
Date: 2016-08-21 10:17 pm (UTC)it was fun except my failure to navigate a city
they all looked like that. I thought they were so cool
no subject
Date: 2016-08-22 12:14 am (UTC)So, you found MY problem with navigation? I got lost here in town yesterday.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-22 01:26 am (UTC)snort no, my probelm was I didn't have the right directions to go of of
no subject
Date: 2016-08-22 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-22 01:55 am (UTC)