Well, the Jasmine's gone now and a 26 storey condo tower will soon be taking its place at SW 4th and Harrison. The Jasmine was Portland's last authentic mid-century tiki lounge downtown, built in 1955 and operated by the same family ever since. Up next for demolition is the 95 year old Virginia Cafe ("The VC" for us locals) at 725 SW Park, soon to be a 35 storey condo tower. Yay progress.



The Jasmine's bar exposed by demolition:





Close-up of what had been the area behind the bar:





The exterior:





Then (2005):





And now:





The doomed Virginia Cafe, scheduled to come down this Fall:

My favorite actor to impersonate, Crispin Glover (you know, Marty McFly in BTtF, George in River's Edge, the guy who screams "I'm making my lunch!" in Wild at Heart?), is doing a three day intimate Q&A, movie showing, and slide show presentation at the Clinton Street Theatre all weekend. A couple of my friends have even been hanging out with the guy the past two days! I forgot I was supposed to go and made plans for tonight...I get so forgetful lately.



Anyway, first it was the Hung Far Low, now it's the Jasmine Tree Lounge, downtown's last genuine 50's tiki bar, that will be leaving us. It's all empty and ready to be torn down to make way for another damn condo tower, but they still light up the signs at night. If I were ballsier I'd steal this one out of spite!







Here's what the place looks like on the outside. There used to be big tiki god heads hanging on the walls, but they've all been removed.







Older photo I took a while back. Tiki heads still up:







The inside featured a lot of bamboo and a lava rock fireplace that was so nice to drink beside on cold nights (it's off to the left in the photo below). Two full-sized outrigger canoes hung from the ceiling - one above the bar and the other near the stage. This is how the interior looks now, awaiting demolition:











Anyone out there have any memories of The Jasmine they want to share?





Here's a couple unrelated pic's: the giant Christmas tree being outshone by the moon on Pioneer Square last night, and my silverware drawer, now completely stocked with more 50 year old Ekco Eterna "Canoe" rosewood-handled pieces than I'll ever possibly need. My goal was to never have to buy silverware again and these were always my favorite. Now for the Temporama tableware...

Man, I'm bad at keeping this thing updated. While I'm here, though - gotta say I loves me some eggnog flavored coffee right now. I'll be sick of it in a week or two but for now - damn good stuff! Also: DJ Roog and Starkillers both make some mighty fine driving-beats. They're both getting heavy rotation on the iPod lately. Sometimes a little house music and electronica make me forget it's 30 degrees out for some reason!



Anyway, I've been working a lot of overtime lately and never get time to do much these days. Portland's weather has been a mix of high winds, huge downpours, a little snow, and some freezing rain so I haven't been getting out to take pic's for a while now. Instead, I've been working on the house and the car in my spare time.



Anyone who knows me knows I take road trips all the time in my teeny little car (7 pages of photos are on this site: http://www.cardomain.com/ride/411420). I'd been keeping the car stock as a rock until this August, when it was hit by a big-ass truck. There's photos of the accident a couple entries down. Anyway, my insurance company totalled the car out, I bought it back for $125, and I pocketed $1,200 - $200 more than I paid for it over three years ago! I got it all put back together with $50 worth of parts from a junkyard. Now that the car's essentially worthless I decided to start sinking some money into it for some reason. First to get replaced was the stereo system, which had been stolen in September. The thief cut the top to get inside, so I had a nice cloth top installed that's SO much more quiet than the old one! I actually have dry seats after heavy rainstorms; that's something I've never had before! After that I found some 14" wheels on craigslist and installed them, which gave the car a much more modern look. I put Audi A4 side marker lights in the front fenders and a second, much louder horn under the hood. I have a bunch of plans for both the interior and exterior, so I'll post changes as I go. Here's how it looks so far:







Kinda hard to believe it's 15 years old! My other project of late has been restoring my little place back to original. I've gone kind of crazy buying up things like mid-century silverware, bark cloth pillows, and even a '55 Joy dish soap bottle off eBay lately. The big Coke sign, the green paint, and the book/album shelves will be getting replaced shortly. The kitchen will also have checkered linoleum next week if I get time. Here's pic's of the living room and kitchen so far.











I don't usually leave the bar open; you can see how cluttered it would be in this little place if I did!



Hey, whatayaknow - time to go to work again! God, I need a couple days to get out of town!Gotta pay the bills, though; my tabs at the Reel 'em In Tavern don't pay themselves!

The following pic's are some of the abandoned places I've happened across over the past nine months. The pictures aren't artistic or anything - I was driving when I took quite a few of them!



This is an abandoned Phillips 66 gas station that's slowly falling apart in Kent, Oregon. The roof used to have letters that spelled out "EAT" but they're almost gone. The place is like a time capsule; there's even a 1960's era Salem cigarettes ad in the front window:





From the front. I have quite a few closer pic's of this place:





Fill 'er up:





The old pumps still have stickers on them warning of the gas containing lead. This means they were already shut down prior to 1985:





A pic I just found on the 'net: what this place looked like several years ago:





One of Portland, Oregon's most popular restaurants in the 1950's and 60's, The Carnival had fallen on hard times by the early 90's. After new owners unsuccessfully tried a Japanese theme, the restaurant by then renamed the Carrousel) closed a number of years ago:





I have a 1965 Portland visitor's guide that says about The Carnival: "Just off hand, I can't think of a nicer place to take the children or your best girl on a sunny day". Inside, the brick floor is becoming overgrown with plants:





What used to be The Carnival's main buffet room:





Trojan Nuclear Power Plant after 12 years of neglect. I snapped this pic the weekend before it was torn down back in May of this year.





An old, rock homestead that must have been really nice at one time. This is in City of Rocks, Idaho:





Another old homestead disappearing into the high desert near Lynn, Utah:



The old Declo Hotel in the tiny town of Declo, Idaho. I snapped it on my way by:





A boarded-up 1913 fire house in Portland, Oregon. I'm not sure what's going to be done with this building:





Portland's Rose Friend Apartments, which date to 1910, in it's last days before demolition. A new condo tower is planned for the site:





For comparison, here are the Rose Friend Apartments in May of 2006, prior to everyone's evictions:





This is a huge, abandoned cement factory near Dixie, Oregon, on the Idaho border:





Sorry - I know they're bad pic's! I have more on my other computer that I can't get to yet but'll add when I can.

How can it be that I haven't posted anything here in close to a YEAR? I couldn't begin to describe everything that's happened over the past nine months, so I'll let some some of the photos I've taken do it for me. I have lots of pic's on another computer that isn't working, so I'll have to update this at some point.



The view from Mt Hood's Timberline Lodge parking lot in the winter. Taken with a crappy camera-phone:





Doing some cross country skiing with Emily up at Trillium Lake near Mt Hood:





Drove to the beach in February to take advantage of some rare sun:





I sold my Volvo wagon and replaced it with a big, lame mini-van that's actually pretty practical. I drive it about once a month when I help someone move or something. In this pic it's all loaded with my mom's gear as I get ready to drive her up to Portland for a week's visit last Spring:





Once here, my sister and I took mom to the rhododendrun gardens down the street from my house. I'd never been there before and couldn't believe how cool the place was - especially in Spring:





I took her up through the Columbia Gorge to see the waterfalls, including Multnomah Falls...:





...and Ononta Gorge. I had her wheelchair in the car with her.





Saying goodbye to Trojan Nuclear Power Plant the weekend before they imploded it last May. I wish they'd left it standing as a cold-war era relic; it was always really cool to see the place as you went by it:





That same day, Emily and I went camping at the coast. This is the sun setting over the shipwreck Peter Iredale near Astoria, Oregon:





At a Summer Solstice party my friend Shawn (who's already had a few in the pic) broke out the Absinthe. Pretty different, but tasty. The next day's hangover was no fun, though:





A Summer sunset over Portland's Union Station:





I got a big kick out of this guy's ribbon collection - it circled the whole car. At least it's an American car, I guess:





I decided to rearrange my living room in July. It was always vintage, but now it's more functional:





I decided to go camping out in Central Oregon over the July 4th holiday. I snapped this pic of an old, abandoned gas station near the town of Antelope. If you look at the roof you can see where it used to spell out "EAT". The old pumps still have their "This gasoline contains lead" warning stickers:





I like to drive until I'm 20 miles from the nearest cell phone signal and the loudest sounds are the crickets. This is on the way out to one of those places, along the John Day River:





The end of the trail. John Day Fossil Beds:





Back in Portland, I was working when we got an unexpected lighting storm in August. I set my camera on top of the seawall in Waterfront Park, pointed it East, and left the shutter on continuous until the memory card was full. I got several pic's of lighting strikes, including these:













I managed to snap a pic of a dragonfly as it passed by. This is an enlargement:





This didn't hurt as bad as it looks. I fell off a wall while working and caught my shin on my way down. Nasty, huh?





Hiking up Eagle Creek in the gorge. These are the falls at the end of the trail:





Emily and I broke up and I decided to take a drive and do some thinking one warm night. I ended up in Southern Idaho before I realized I'd better call in sick to work!





I ended up camping at the coolest campground I've ever seen. It's called City of Rocks and it's on the Idaho/Utah border in the middle of freakin' nowhere. Really cool rock formations, sagebrush, isolation, and spectacular views make this place unbeatable for getting away from it all.





This was my campsite. It was 106 degrees that day and I ended up moving my tent under the big rock, where it was much cooler.





The desert as seen from a rock:





The next day I continued South and ended up in Salt Lake City to hit all the Deseret thrift stores. It was 105 degrees out and I ended up with a second degree sunburn on my chest like an idiot. I just can't seem to put the top up.





I continued East, climbing up to Park City and over the mounatins in 100 degree heat. I entered Colorado that evening and passed by this place, the super patriotic Kum and Go market. I love it:





That ultimate of oxymorons: the drive-thru liquor store. This is in trendy Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where I stayed the night:





The sun setting above Steamboat Springs:





The next day, with the temperature still above 95, I climbed further up into Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, eventually crossing the Continental Divide at 10,759 feet (over two miles above sea level). My little 3 cylinder Geo Metro performed flawlessly depsite the steep hills, heat, and weight of my gear.





This is top of America - almost 12,000 feet above sea level in Colorado's tundra. The views were absolutely breathtaking up here:





Standing in front of the Hotel Stanley in Estes Park, Colorado. This is where the TV mini-series version of Stephen King's The Shining was filmed. The place really was pretty creepy inside and is supposed to be haunted. King was staying here when he got the idea for the book:





Downtown Cheyenne, Wyoming, where the wages are still pretty low, apparently:





A tunnel in Western Wyoming:





I ended up driving 1,700 miles in just 3 days - all completely unplanned. Two days after I returned my car was run over by a Ford F-350 truck making an illegal turn. I had to buy my car back from the insurance company, but it's since been all repaired:





One day earlier this month, I happened across this site on Portland's Naito Parkway. The street's being redesigned and repaved to make it smoother right now. Exposed that day was the original cobblestone Front Avenue beneath, complete with trolley tracks, curbs, and old manhole covers still intact. It was really cool to be able to walk on a street that's been paved over for close to 70 years. Within a day, though, it had all been torn up.





Taken at the Mexican Independence celebration last week. This mural was so weird - people dressed in traditional clothes dancing beside an Aztec pyramid...and a Chevy truck! Worse, what's with the big Chevy logo in the sky?





Well, luckily for you I'm too tired to post anything else tonight. I'll try to get some of the better photos up when I can retrieve them!