Portal Spectrometry: South Waterfront

For this trip to South Waterfront, I entered via the Portland Streetcar. This is the fourth time that I have been to South Waterfront, and the second time I’ve entered via the Streetcar. The other two times have been on foot. In all trips, the entry under the Marquam Bridge feels like I’m passing through a massive city gate that cuts South Waterfront off from the rest of town. Once I got down there, I gave the O a call, and she told me that everyone was at the main coffee shop. I headed over there, through chilly weather a light drizzle. Nothing had noticably changed, aside from progress on a half-circle shaped building that had added about fifteen stories since the last time I visited. The future park is still a sod field.

The coffee shop is strange, with a fountain, a chandelier, and a grand staircase. Preparations were being made for some sort of holiday party. O offered me half of her sandwich, some combination of turkey, pepper jack cheese and cranberry. It was pretty delicious. Glancing out the window, I noticed that one of the tram cars appeared to be stopped mid-line. O told me that they had noticed that it was stopped on their way in. T pointed out that it was moving, but that it was moving exceedingly slowly. I figure it took at least a half hour for the car to get from one end to another. I suggested that we go interview the people as they got off of the tram and see what it was all about, but we didn’t get around to it.

 We talked about how South Waterfront - and the coffee shop, specifically - felt like a middle place, or a non-place, or an un-place. We talked about that coffee shop could be anywhere in America: Phoenix, Cincinatti, Richmond. The coffee shop reminded T of the waystation in 2001. I’ve never seen 2001 myself, so I couldn’t really relate.

We talked about the entrances to South Waterfront, and how difficult it seemed to get to the area. T drew some nice diagrams that might get posted on this blog. I suggested that he make a map of maps on how to get to South Waterfront. One thing that I noticed, but didn’t express to the group, is how strange I think it is that they appied a strict grid-based system to the neighborhood; it makes the neighborhood only about three blocks wide, and to me, it feels like it barely is enough room to make it a neighborhood. I think that in this observation, I’m influenced by having seen street layouts in very compact European cities. There is a lot of buffer space around South Waterfront, and I am interested specifically in how that buffer space gets incorporated into the area.

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