New Year Sabbatical: There Goes the Neighborhood

The Sabbatical Continues!

Five Years Ago in The Infinite Art Tournament!

Today's entry comes from June 30, 2008.  It is a bland little post about my neighborhood, and I remember it fondly as just about the only post in the six-year history of this enterprise to generate a something that might be called a "flame war." Since the other guy invoked the word "Nazi," the generally accepted rules of internet discourse hold that I won the argument at that point. 

The Monday Quiz XIV, back in February [2008], carried a special bonus prize. The winner was entitled to assign a blog post topic. Mrs.5000 -- hail, victor! -- took the first E.P., so here is the topic she chose.

The Seven Wonders of the Castle5000 Environs





1. Laurelhurst Park! Designed in 1912 by Frederick Law Olmstead's firm, Laurelhurst Park is like some idealized golden-tinged movie version of what a city park might be. Strangely, it's real. Many years ago, visiting from Kansas, I had an odd vision that Laurelhurst Park was the source of all the green in the world. Although I now live three blocks away, it is not technically true that the Park is my private running track. It's just that it might as well be.

2013 Update: Laurelhurst Park is Still There.  For some reason I do not run it it very much these days, but prefer a nearby cemetery instead.

2. The Famous Building! The Belmont Condomiums, a few corners from Castle5000, has been featured in glowing suck-up articles in most of your leading architectural and metrosexual journals, including Dwell and Metropolitan Home. It features a fauncy restaurant on the ground floor to which Mrs.5000 can take her more sophisticated friends on occasion, while I stay home and enjoy the simple but hearty fare to which I became accustomed in the long years of my bachelorhood.

2013 Update: The famous building is Still There.  It has been rained on for a few seasons, and no longer particularly stands out in my own mental map of the neighborhood.   But, perhaps for some it still remains an emblem of the crushing forces of totalitarianism and dehumanization.  Its restaurant space has turned over at least once, and I am not 100% confident of what's in there right now.

3. Joan D'Arc! In the middle of an oddly out-of-context roundabout is an oddly out-of-context statue of the "Maid of Orleans," Joan of Arc. Why a salute to France's 15th Century populist woman warrior and religious nut, here in the City of Roses? Well, having braved the traffic to take her photograph, I found a little placard explaining that Joan is our local World War I monument. Which is cool, but isn't an important aspect of a monument that people need to know what it commemorates?

Whatevs. Joan is a most excellent citizen of the neighborhood, and I enjoy her somewhat random quality.

2013 Update: Joan is Still There. 

4. Dixie Mattress! In the very middle of a moderately properous neighborhood strip, in an area where property values have multiplied fourfold over the last fifteen years, this mysterious commercial (or perhaps industrial) building is an enigma. One can see a few mattresses inside, yes, but also miscellaneous junk and a thick layer of dust. Yellowing, handwritten notes on the doors give numbers to call "in case of emergency." There is no sign that anyone makes mattresses here, or even meth. No one seems to go into the building at all.  

[2008 Update: Since I wrote this, an article in the 'Gonian has taught us that an occasional mattress is still repaired in Dixie Mattress by its, uh, loveably irrascable owners. Hello, Pulitzer!]

2013 Update: Dixie Mattress No Longer Exists, having gone under back in aught-ten.  The Dixie Mattress co-owner who scoffed at the idea of cashing out in the 2008 Oregonian article may have felt a little sheepish selling her property two years later, when it had almost certainly lost a painful percentage of its value.  But she was hardly the only one to feel that particular pain.  







5. The Kitchiest Statue Ever Erected! A tribute to emergency services personel who died fighting a large fire in an East Coast city in the early 2000s. Their service and sacrifice is commemorated by this portrayal of a bare-chested man who thrusts forth a lantern with his left hand, barely missing a eagle that is just then taking wing. An American flag is caught in its talons. You would think this eagle would startle the guy, but he don't seem to notice it.

In his right hand, strangely, the man clutches the neck of a really big snake. Yep. A really big snake. Or maybe he's just happy to see you.

2013 Update: The Kitchiest Statue Ever Erected is still there. I've noticed that small children seem to think that it's really cool. I try not to judge them.

6. The Belmont Branch! One of the smallest branches of the Multnomah County Library in sheer size, it is one of the largest in terms of volume of books reserved and checked out. Only some of that is due to me. But really, it's an amazing thing. From right here on the internet, I can put a hold on almost any piece of cultural production that comes to mind. A few days later, I walk two blocks and pick it up. What's not to love? Nothing's not to love! This is a branch library that gets its own love letters!

2013 Update: The Belmont Branch is still there, although for a while it wasn't there on Mondays. The Library and I are kind of frenemies right now, after it implemented the worst website redesign in the history of time. But someday there will be another new website redesign, and I will still be here, waiting.

7. The Castle5000 Raspberry Patch. Descended through several generations from the stock planted by Grandpa5000 many years ago, the Castle5000 patch is the envy of all who behold its produce. The right hand patch produces around a quart of berries a day in July and early August. The left hand patch is new this year; since raspberries are biennial, it won't add to the crop until Summer 2009. Mmm... Raspberries....

2013 Update: The Castle5000 Raspberry Patch is still there.  It has been an early year for raspberries, so I've been stuffing myself with them for a week already.  The "new" canes have never quite caught up to the original, as the neighbors' hops tend to jump the fence and bully them a little, but they are certainly worth their square footage and upkeep.

It's the Book Arts! Open Studio with Mrs.5000

Come along with Infinite Art Tournament as we take an exclusive tour of Mrs.5000's subterranean book arts lair!

Shh, she's working!

...with her characteristic care and precision!

The subterranean book arts lair shares much in common with the retreats of other wizards, especially in its profusion of eldrich tomes and colorful bric-a-brac.

You never know what you might end up needing, so it's best to keep everything well sorted.

After all, art is an intuitive process that depends on, and evolves in interrelationship with, its component materials!

And the craftsperson is nothing without her tools.

It's fun to go exploring in the lair.  You never know what you'll find.

It is, however, very well organized.

If you need a few broken umbrella skeletons, for instance, you'll find them right where they belong.

A place for everything!

And everything in its place!

Castle5000 Bedroom Remodel: Q&A

In response to last Monday's post on the Castle5000 bedroom remodel, L&TM5K Vice-Dork Jenners kindly remarked:

I'm sure it feels good to be done ... and I think you did a good job .. but seriously, why not add some color????!!!!!!!!

An excellent question! For Jenners has never crossed the threshold of Castle5000. She has never seen the safety-orange living room! The maroon of the entry way! The bright yellow (with purple trim) of the downstairs bathroom! Never seen the kitchen with its violet floor and royal blue trim! The indigo of the guest room! The Moroccan Ice Blue Bathroom, she has seen only in photographs.

So she could not know that the Castle5000 bedroom colors -- three flavors of white -- were carefully chosen as the only place in the house where color has NOT been added.

And why not? Because it's the only place we can do things like this:

Any other questions?

Bedroom ReModel2010 Staggers Across the Finish Line

Last Sunday, Mrs.5000 & I put the last coats of paint on the what had turned out to be a tedious two months of Castle5000 bedroom remodel. Monday, we rented one of those carpet cleaner dealies and went around cleaning up not just collateral damage from all the construction but six years of wear and tear and the last obvious physical traces of my late barfy cat. Tuesday, we went to the movies. Wednesday, we moved back into our bedroom. It's good to be home.

In response to increasingly belligerent demands for before-and-after pictures from certain quarters, we are pleased to offer this exciting collection of the same. Please keep any comments to the effect of "it looks pretty much like it did before" to yourself, thanks.

Entering the room. I mean, really, it was a poorly painted white room, and now it's a well painted white room. Big whup.



Window Frame: Of course, little details can make a lot of difference.




Here, we see that the new paint job really mostly throws into relief that the right-hand door needs a paint job itself.



Crappy old built-in shelves become gleaming new built-in shelves. They look better now that they have books and stuff on them.

This light fixture turned out to be powered by two knob-and-tube wires just coming out of a hole in the ceiling. Old houses are full of charming surprises! The new fixture is a little on the big side, but a little more contemporary. Meaning, it should be a few decades before it makes too many people wince.




Mrs.5000 did, I think, a splendid job of fixing the massive hole I made in the wall plaster.



...and you have to know where to look to see traces of the obnoxious old outlet:



Finally:

Tours available by appointment only.

A Voice From the Past

Last week, I showed you some of the little items that Mrs.5000 and I found inside the Castle5000 walls during our tediously ongoing bedroom remodel. I neglected, though, to mention something we found literally ~on~ a wall. More specifically, it was something carved into a door moulding that was revealed only after we sanded off several layers of paint. Seven letters can been clearly seen, etched deep in the wood by a very sharp knife or blade!



Now, it's a little hard to see in the photograph, so I've performed a subtle image enhancement to help you read it better.


Isn't it always so interesting to encounter such messages, little missives sent forwards into our own time from unknown people of the past!? In this case, too, there is the question of what it might mean. Our working theory is that someone named Killfux must have lived in the house before us. Perhaps that was the last name of the charming children we saw in last week's post.

It was difficult to decide whether to preserve this little piece of Castle5000 heritage, but in the end we decided to paint over it along with the rest of the mouldings. We hope you will not think us historically insensitive.

Ghosts in the Walls

Work continues in fits and starts on the Castle5000 bedroom remodel, and recently we tore out some crappy built-in bookshelves to replace them with, hopefully, better built-in bookshelves.

Whenever you open up the walls in an old house, you have good odds of finding little items that, although commonplace enough, are rendered mysterious by where you've happened to find them.

Houses often change their shapes over the course of their lives. Amateur home archeologists that Mrs.5000 and I are, we were intrigued to find three layers of wallpaper, one painted over, on a surface that hasn't been exposed for decades.


This game piece for Reversi, or perhaps Othello, must have fallen through a crack sometime in the last 40 years. Who lost it? When? Did it ruin their day, or did they not even notice it was missing?

A playing card, folded in quarters. It's the three of diamonds, which seems like an inauspiciously weak card to draw from behind the walls.

A broken part of a cheap, militaristic toy airplane. "Made in Hong Kong," as was so much toy trash of the 1960s and 1970s.

And then, along with an old battery, broken paint brushes, two pennies, a safety pin, and other minor items: a strip of negatives. Remember negatives? They were a kind of intermediary between film cameras and the prints that you would pick up from the store, back when you would sometimes see your pictures weeks or even months after you pushed the button. This has, quietly, been one of the more profound changes to everyday life during my adulthood, so it was fun to take the negatives across the street to the drugstore, just like in the old days.


What came back are pictures of children engaged in wholesome-looking educational activities.

We can determine, to our disappointment, that none of the photos were taken in Castle5000. Did the children live here, though? Or were they dear to someone who did?

These kids might be anywhere from 25 to 50 today, although 35 to 45 seems like a reasonable guess based on the vintage their surroundings. There is no date on the film, and no clues to their connection to the house. They could be anyone, in a sense, and they could be anywhere.

If you happen to BE one of these children, please check in. We're curious.

How to Rewire an Electric Outlet

Step 1: Tear up the wall behind the outlet that you are going to rewire. Make sure to turn off power to the area first so that the painfully claustrophobic area you will be working in, often lying on your back in filth and fiberglass insulation, is lit only by a finicky trouble light and a head lamp.


Step 2: Remove the outlet that some jackass of 60 or 70 years ago put not only at the midpoint of the wall -- the very spot where it is least likely to be useful -- but also right in the freaking baseboard, thus wedding a general eyesore, the bracing challenges of impracticality, and the excitement of wondering if the carpet might someday catch fire.


Step 3: Drill holes through the wall studs to reroute the existing wiring to the desired location of your new outlet. Using a keyhole saw, it is easy to cut a hole for the new outlet box!


Step 4: Then, drill a bunch of additional holes and run some new wire to a location where you want to add a second outlet box. NOTE: You should probably only be doing this if you know a little bit about wiring.

Step 5: Slap in your outlet boxes and wire up the outlets in the usual fashion.

Step 6: Then return to the hell which is the area behind your new outlets, and spend what seems like the rest of your life rebuilding the wall so that it covers your work. NOTE: I suggest testing the new wiring scheme to make sure it works before sealing it back within the wall.

If your project has been successful, you should look like this:

...and your new outlets should look more or less like this: