I went to Portland, Oregon as a child and my fuzzy memories include dumpster diving (though that was probably in Eugene) and a small Elvis shrine in an alley.
It appears that the shrine doesn’t exist anymore, but this is what it looked like back then (photo courtesy of Wikipedia.org):
It was a curious little window of art, dedicated to Elvis Presley. I had a great fondness for Elvis (still do, a little bit), as well as a grand fascination (still do, a whole lot) with art of this type.
In my research, I found this shrine was known as the 24 Hour Church of Elvis and it had four different locations until it was put to rest (for now) in 2013, because of lack of funds.
I don’t remember this by the time I got to it as a 9 or so year old girl, but it was originally a fortune-telling machine and then had elaborate coin-operated art exhibits.
“Keep Portland Weird” is a motto the city holds (borrowed from Austin, I must note) and this kind of thing helps keep it weird. I hope it comes back or gets to live on in some other way!
It was exciting to create new, adult memories in this weird, beautiful city.
We continued our visit with a calm walk downtown and through Waterfront Park.
Though not nearly as interesting as the 24 Hour Church of Elvis, animal statues have a special place in my heart.
Then, onto one of my favorite things we did in Portland. We had a picnic with Lauren and some of her family members and watched Vaux’s Swifts fly into a school’s chimney to roost. Vaux’s Swifts are small, dark birds (named in the mid-1800s, after William Sansom Vaux, a mineralogist and friend of the ornithologist who discovered the birds, John Kirk Townsend). Swifts are pretty much always in flight – they do not perch, but can cling vertically on surfaces. They eat, drink, gather food and nesting materials, and mate while flying. It is common for them to roost in chimneys. If they find a good chimney, the population is likely to return year after year.
Every year in late August, thousands of Vaux’s Swifts gather in Portland as they get ready to migrate to Central America and Venezuela.
The school we visited, Chapman Elementary School, houses the largest known migrating spots for Vaux’s Swifts in the world. The swifts usually stay for a couple of weeks before moving on. I read that when they first were discovered, the students and facility went without heat to protect them. Now the furnace is elsewhere and the chimney is pretty much just for the swifts to return to each year.
Every night in September, people gather to watch this inspiring event occur. It was a lovely way to spend a last evening – the final night of our stay in Portland, the final night of my 30th year, and the final night September.
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