Arts & Books I'm not exactly wild about the neighborhood Willamette Week has called home since 2006. Shortly after we moved in to our building at Northwest 22nd Avenue and Quimby Street, a coworker described the area as a "wasteland of $8 hamburgers"—a description that, although lunch prospects have improved substantially since then, still rings true. But one thing I do admire about the north end of the alphabet ...   More

Arts & Books While walking in Creston-Kennilworth recently, I spotted two houses, one block apart, that epitomize the potential for strangeness that comes of owner-built additions. The owner of the first, at left, has run with his home's silly Tudorbethan half-timbering and adopted a Ye Olde theme for the property, adding a plastered entryway that looks straight out of the Shire. ---The building seems to be in ...   More

Arts & Books Another reader submission this week: Tom Jaleski writes, "We have had to live with this towering construction site garbage heap the owner calls "pride of the Linnton" for three years now and this is only the first story. A really sad thing to see everyday, also sad to watch him destroy the hillside for this. It is really insensitive and unresponsive to the site." I think he's right. Were the thing ...   More

Arts & Books This terrifying creature, welded from various bits of metal castoffs, stands outside the front door of Sniff Dog Hotel on Northwest Raleigh Street. Sniff, where your pup can stay in a 70 square-foot, climate-controlled penthouse with a TV and "skylights with city views" for $75/night and receive a $16 "paw-dicure," is, with that lime green and brown paint scheme, something of an eyesore in its own ...   More

Arts & Books I must have walked past this metal assemblage, on a pedestrian trail just west of Keller Auditorium, hundreds of times. But it was only this past weekend that I realized that it is not a garish and whimsical air vent, but a work of art. It's called Awning, and it was made in 1976 by a Canadian sculptor named Douglas Senft, whose other work includes an enormous drill bit, a fountain of outsized maple ...   More

Arts & Books Let's hear it for crowd-sourcing! This week's eyesore comes from reader Mike Banker, who writes, "It's mostly the blindness to scale that I like about this house and it's columns."Mike's right—those are some Brobdingnagian columns, better suited to holding up a courthouse than the roof of an otherwise fairly attractive bungalow. But I think we shouldn't be too hasty to dismiss the massive supports ...   More

Arts & Books This former pharmacy, built in 1922, is actually my favorite building on Southeast Foster Road. I love the elegant curve of the facade and the detailed brickwork on the second story. But for a very long time, since before I first saw it, the storefront has been wrapped in hideous fencing and left to molder. Many of the windows are broken, and the lathe and plaster walls inside appear to be crumbling. ...   More

Arts & Books Portland has no shortage of beautiful buildings. From the stately arches of Central Library to the pleasingly asymmetrical windows of the 937 Condominiums, the city has been blessed with its share of good architecture. But who wants to write about things they like? That's for nerds like Bart King and Brian Libby. Nah, we're an alt-weekly here, and that means we love nothing more than to bitch about ...   More

Arts & Books  There's nothing really egregious about this alley, between two buildings on Southeast Foster Road at 66th Avenue. This part of the city is full of narrow, muddy, unpaved alleys leading nowhere in particular. But this particular alley is the scene of a crime. No, not the tagging—that's just asshattery. What happened here is far worse.In 1999, an artists named Becky Bristol painted a pair of ...   More