Decorated

Even under gray and drizzly skies, this house on Bond Street wishes everyone a fun and colorful Halloween. The sign next to the door reads, "Happy Fall, Y'all." This small Victorian home is one of Astoria's most colorful in any season.

The Hobson House on Bond Street

The Hobson House is one of the numerous historic houses in Astoria, Oregon, but it's also one of the best known, and it's on the National Register. I think it's also one of the most attractive of Astoria's venerable old Victorian ladies. As you walk around town, you see a wealth of unique detail. This house puts it all together beautifully.

In addition, this house has an unusual colored sign as well as the black and white plaque we've seen a few times before

The Blue Scorcher: A bakery/cafe with a big difference

One of the pleasantest places to eat in Astoria is the Blue Scorcher Bakery Cafe at the corner of 15th Street and Duane Avenue. Occupying half of an older Astoria concrete building, this place has an atmosphere like no other. It's built into the side of a hill, which is not so unusual for this town, but it does lend charm. The walls are . . . well, you can see for yourself. The decor is funky. The space is spacious. The views are riverine. The smells are delicious, and the tastes are even more so. It's run as a workers' collective. You can borrow and read the New York Times or any number of other papers and magazines you don't see on every street corner in Astoria. The owner/workers are friendly, and they think "Community" with a capital "C." They have a program called Bread Equity, which you can read about on their fascinating web site, linked above. (Check out their gallery; 40 types of bread? And those are only the ones they have photos of!) One thing I'm not sure about is how they got their name. Do they have a temperamental indigo oven that runs a little hot? (Ah, mystery solved.) One warning: Don't go in unless you intend to get hooked.

Here's a review and some photos by someone who loved it.

Since 1886

I absolutely love the way this 2nd-storey wall looks near the corner of Duane Avenue and 13th Street. How did it retain the lines? It looks like someone planned it, but it's simply an old, old wall. It says McLin Hardware Co. Inc. Since 1886. Sometime I'll try to decipher the whole wall. I also wonder what the name was of the hotel. Like art in a museum, it invites the imagination to put the pieces together - or maybe it tugs at the historian in all of us. It certainly showcases the signpainter's art of a bygone era.

It's a jumble out there

I took several elegant photos yesterday, and this is not one of them. But I think it's a fun photo, so I'm using it. It's a little like a collage artist's rendering of some of the things we've already seen.

In the downtown area, each block you walk away from the river takes you up to yet another "viewing platform" level. There are no platforms, only sidewalks, but it's like climbing any mountain where you keep turning around to see the view below. I took this photo from Duane Avenue between 14th and 15th Streets. All day long we had drenching rain punctuated by sun breaks. I especially love looking at the bright orange ships in this weather. Still, the color hasn't come out right; getting the orange to appear as it does in real life has been a big challenge. I'm still working on it! It's simply a joy to look at them in the changing light.

The distance in this photo is extremely truncated due to the long zoom. The river is about four miles wide here, and yet the hills in Washington look so close. So does the ship, although it's quite far out in the river.

Most of the cars you see are parked on Marine Drive. Beyond the hedge and invisible in this photo, is the River Walk, which passes in front of the red and gray buildings. The red building is the old radio tower building, built in the 1950s, and re-sided and re-windowed in 2007. I lease the downstairs for my shop, while the landlord keeps the apartment above. Online, the store is called Tapir and Friends Wildlife World, but the more accessible local name is The Animal Store. (I thought it would be easier for people to remember who had no association to tapirs.) In the cyberworld, it doesn't matter so much. They look up "toy aardvark" or whatever on Google, and they find us (often at the top of the page). Most of our business is done online and the post office picks up from us every day. We like the locals and tourists dropping in, but if I'd been planning on making a living from local traffic I'd have had to locate on Commercial Avenue. The gray building the right of us is Englund Marine, now vacant because they moved into a huge new building in the harbor area at the west end of town. Eventually, their building will make way for condos. It will probably be a nice building, but nobody with a view over the top of that area is looking forward to the day. Local ordinances going back to the 1800s give the property owners (actually 99-year lessees) the right to build far out into the water, so local committees are working with the owners to create as much visual and functional quality along the river as possible for the public, even when new buildings are put in.

In this photo, Commercial Avenue is represented on the left by a gray building (The Garment Gallery) and on the far right by the very front edge of Area Properties. In the middle is a parking lot, which is why I was able to get this view straight through to the water.

. My World Tuesday

Screaming scarlet bushes

This is what I meant in the last post about "screaming scarlet" fall leaves. I've noticed these bushes a lot around this area and in Portland. It's not like you can miss them. I'm sure they're chosen exactly for the color they turn in fall. I took this photo at the edge of the Safeway parking lot not far from this old shed. The river looks white on this drizzly day. The hills in the distance are on the Washington side of the Columbia River. Of course, that's the River Walk beyond the tracks.

One of the rail lines you see in both photos is for the much-used Astoria Riverfront Trolley. The other line hasn't been used for awhile. They resurrected it a couple of years ago for several Amtrak passenger cars that ran between Astoria and Portland (2 hours by car). It was a great idea if you wanted to come from Portland to Astoria for the day or a couple of days, but the sceduling and logistics were a mess if you wanted to go from Astoria and spend the day in Portland. The timing was all wrong, and it made for an expensive proposition since you would almost have to stay overnight in Portland if you lived in Astoria. Daytripping was virtually ruled out unless you wanted to ride the train, turn around and come right back. Maybe they'll plan it better next time. We all loved the idea.

Is this normal?

It seems I've lived in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) just long enough to wonder if moss grows on trees like this everywhere, and I simply can't remember. I don't think so. I'll bet our 70 to 90 inches of rain per year have got something to do with it. (This photo looks especially nice if you click on it to enlarge it.) We have some beautiful colors now, including bright red, mostly on lower bushes. I'll do my best to get a photo before we have a wind that blows them all away. Have you noticed that the city gardeners (or whoever they are) seem to plant lots of bushes these days that turn screaming scarlet in the fall? Was that always true?

Inside/Outside at Coffee Girl

It's always warm and inviting at Coffee Girl, even when it's wet outside. Here you can get a hint of the superb view from the window or the outside deck. The deck is perched quite a few feet above the river with fantastic effect. If you're going to sit out at the table, I suggest waiting until the rain stops. The flowers are inside on the window sill, by the way! The link above has lots of nice photos. I recommend it highly. Or if you're in Astoria, I recommend dropping in. It's on Pier 39, on the east end of town.

Take a look at Floral Friday to see more nice flowers from around the globe :)

Tails tell tales

I took this on a drizzly day recently using the zoom, as we don't get this close to the big ships in reality. The Hanjin Madrid is unloaded, revealing an interesting pattern of metalwork. In this photo on another web site, you can see the same ship in another port with a full cargo. One of the links from this page will take you to many more photos of the same ship. Hanjin is one of the most common shipping lines seen on the lower Columbia River. I found it interesting that this particular ship was registered in Hamburg, Germany, as so many of the ships we see are registered in either Panama or in Monrovia, Liberia, where about 10% to 15% of the world's big ships are registered.

In case you wondered, I spent a few days in Portland. I expected to post from there, but it didn't work out, so I'm playing catch-up today, which is actually late on October 25th. I'm looking forward to visiting your posts for the weekend and making comments, although it may not happen till morning!

~ Sheryl

Bridge, river, gulls, ship

I took this photo a year ago September, but it might as well have been taken today. This is our weather. The horizon line blurrs, the hills in Washington cannot be seen, the sky is nothing but gray clouds, and seagulls roost in the rain or drizzle. Ships such as this one, Ocean Lotus, make their way up and down the river, passing beneath one of the most scenic bridges in the world, and some call it a romantic scene. I do. Do you?

It looks like we have a cruise ship in today. The Riverfront Trolley is running, and it's full of tourists taking one of the changeable moods of Astoria, Oregon.