Downtown

I was in downtown Portland last Friday with some time to kill and I noticed a few things. Portland has some free flowing water fountains scattered here and there. No valve, they just run all the time. As much as it rains here water isn't really a problem. I came across one of these water fountains on my walk and I could have used a drink, but the water was only coming up about a half inch out of the nozzle. It would have been hard to get a drink without putting my lips right down on the nozzle itself and sucking up the water. That is not how water fountains are supposed to work. Typical bureaucrats. Put up water fountains so they can brag about them, but don't give them enough water so anyone can get a drink. And let's not even get started on the valve business.

Then there were the beeping buttons. I am standing on a corner waiting for the light to change and I hear this beeping sound. I look around and finally realize it is coming from the WALK button mounted on the light pole standing next to me. We saw something similar up in Seattle when we were visiting the U-dub campus. It's an aid for blind people. It's not really annoying, it's kind of quiet and with all the street noise it vanishes from hearing within a dozen paces.

Lastly was the back-in angle parking. I had never seen this before. I have seen head-in angle parking, it's all over the place, but this was back-in angle parking. While I was looking for pictures I found a longish paper going over the pros and cons of this arrangement. It will be interesting to see how it turns out. I predict we are going to get a bunch of people backing into adjacent cars, but then I am a bit of a pessimist.