It’s a vague memory. Picking through underbrush and worrying myself over broken bottles and heaps of concrete at night, in my late-teen early-photography-phase quests to get night shots of the skyline. The east side of the Willamette River before the Eastbank Esplanade. A messy and nearly-inaccessible river bank full of tangled, malevolent vines and homeless encampments.
In May, 2001, the city officially opened the Eastbank Esplanade, the 1.5-mile segment of path and floating walkway connecting the Steel Bridge to the Hawthorne, completing a 2.8-mile (or so) loop around the waterfront (the other half being, as you may know, Tom McCall Waterfront Park on the west bank).
Where I used to work is three blocks from the promenade, and the current office is of a likewise distance. I use the path perhaps twice a week, more in the summer, for wanderings and flailing. Enough such that I can barely remember what it was like before, as those memories have all been scrubbed away and layered over with more recent, attractive ones.
Do you remember what the east bank was like before the Esplanade? Do you have any interesting memories of the construction?
Also, there was originally going to be a Phase III of the development plan: developing the path from the Hawthorne down to OMSI. That area is still fairly bedraggled. Did this phase get dropped or is it still on the horizon?
I don’t have a link handy, but I saw something last week about a developer that’s building on the east bank near OMSI, and developing a waterfront walkway was part of the deal.
94.7 KNRK has a little bit they play sometimes about how they’ve been around for over 25 years. 25 years of alternative music.
Except that’s not…possible, unless I have a really messed up recollection of things.
As I remember it, we had 970 AM The Beat until the early- or mid-90’s. This is how I remember high school, or what passed for high school for me (mostly moping around Lincoln High, where I did not even attend).
I remember 970 The Beat as a lot of “Mexican Radio” and “99 Luftballoons” and the more alternative side of Duran Duran. Natalie Merchant. Siouxsie and the Banshees. Blessedly non-grunge.
As I recall it, 970 AM didn’t have a real DJ, and definitely did not have commercials. Or is that just a weird quasi-memory-fantasy of mine? Why is all this so watery when I listened to that station pretty much exclusively at the time?
Then sometime in the mid-90s, it magically migrated to the FM dial. I can’t remember the exact order of things. I think they may have moved it first to somewhere high on the dial, like 107.5, before moving it to 94.7.
Does anyone remember this with more clarity than I do? What heritage gives 94.7 the “right” to claim 25 years? Do the 970 years count? Help me out here.
i have also found this claim to “25 years” questionable. i assume they are counting those 970 days but as far as i can tell the only continuity was the fact they were sending their call letters from Banks.
Hmm. I always thought they were simply referring to 25 years of the existence of alternative music in general, not on their station in particular. But then, I was unaware of this 970AM fellow.
Yes, tODD has it right, it’s 25 years of music not us. We’ve only been around 13 years anyway.
And a side note us and 970 have never been 1. The beat was what we remember on AM, then 94.7 KNRK came along on FM and then 970 the beat moved from am to 107.5 the beat and it has changed formats and music every 18 months since.
Wasn’t that the station (when they were switching over to fm) that they played the same techno kind of beat over and over…and every now and then you would hear an announcer say “The Beat goes on, May 18th.” Damn that seems familiar. That would have been 91 or 92 I think. I can remember listening to it in my high school’s big science lab.
970 AM appeared in the early 90’s and they played tape loops that over time were identifiable and I remember knowing what songs were coming next. I even still have my bumper sticker from their first meet and greet in 1991.
Within a year they started rotating in a DJ to do ads and station identification, but still played tapes and within a couple of years started rotating DJ’d music with tapes in the prime hours.
Sometime mid-nineties they moved to 107.5 and I stopped listening because they lost that cheesy 80’s feel which I enjoyed so much.
I miss 970. They had a lot of good artists on rotation (Talking Heads, Morrissey, Psychedelic Furs, New Order, Tori Amos, etc.) and somehow got it all right.
Anyway, I always assumed that 94.7 meant “25 years” in terms of post-punk art rock/alt rock/stuff that sewed the seeds for the 90’s ‘Alternative’ movement.
While I understand why they ended up doing this … it is just such a stupid waste. Surely they could have figured out how to brand them differently (maybe … spazda) and donate them to something other than the destruction of humanity.
If I could draw or paint or “do art” in some fashion it would probably mostly consist of a weird and concerning homage shrine to Portland’s Fremont Bridge, which, for some reason, I find to be pretty much the best thing I’ve ever seen.
The obsession started sometime in my late teens. The college years, the wandering, lone-wolf, mostly-lonely years wherein I had time to brood and draw bad sketches in black-bound notebooks. I started noticing the Fremont was easy to draw, that double bounce swoop. Plus, it was appealing. I liked standing underneath it. In middle school my marching band practiced under its east flanks. In the awful 2001-2002 times, when breathing even seemed a burden, I spent time under its left flanks taking photos.
Then I resorted to the Internet, which usually serves as a good gateway from “interest” to “stalking/obsession.” Fortunately the bridge is inanimate and has so far been kind enough not to press charges.
Why do I like it?
It’s very epic in proportion. It soars without effort.
It’s modernistic and unemphatic.
It has calming lines like Scandinavian furniture.
It’s unapologetic about its utility. It puts me in mind of Bauhaus in that sense.
Peregrine falcons nest atop it.
From work, at Cloud Four, all I have to do is swivel around in my chair to see the Fremont
Here is some trivia:
It came into being in 1973, yes, before I was born. At the time they lifted the center span, it was the heaviest thing that had ever been lifted, ever. It was in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Last time I’d looked, it was the longest tied-arch bridge in the world. Now it’s second to a bridge across the Yangtze (dang you China!). It is the biggest bridge in Oregon, which is likely not surprising.
Its noticeable design was reactionary to the humdrum, un-fun-utilitarian Marquam Bridge (I-405 bridge over the Willamette River).
It’s 381 feet high. Yep, that will likely kill you, with the jumping.
Fremont bridge + Boats + Birds originally uploaded by Samgrover
How do you feel about the Fremont? In terms of Portland bridges, where does it fall for you?
The Fremont is definitely the most entertaining bridge to drive across. Driving from the east to west side affords an expansive view of the Pearl district and west hills and always gives me that “wow, I live in a real city” feeling.
But, I have to say for looks, the St Johns bridge does it for me. The Hawthorne is nice too, because it seems designed for pedestrians and bikes, with cars being an afterthought. Also, I’m just waiting for the Sellwood bridge to collapse.
Okay, I’ve finally been smoked out of lurker-stan. The Fremont Bridge is a particular love of mine as well. Effortlessly my favorite bridge in Portland.
I have a photo on my wall of Portland taken by a friend that most people, I think, would find actively ugly. It’s taken somewhere in inner southeast, on the top of a building. The top third is cloudy sky, the bottow two-thirds are a sea of warehouses and similar buildings. And rising out of that sea, of course: The Fremont Bridge.
I’d like the Fremont more except from elementary school to the present day, I have recurring nightmares about driving off of it (usually in a school bus), where the top deck curves into 405 - you just keep driving straight and then there’s the sickening plunge. It’s definitely not a bridge for people who are afraid of heights… but then again, most bridges aren’t.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I don’t have a link handy, but I saw something last week about a developer that’s building on the east bank near OMSI, and developing a waterfront walkway was part of the deal.