Portland Industrial Clinic

Took darling daughter downtown to get her immunizations in preparation for her trip to Africa next fall. The place we went to is an old clinic right on the border between an industrial area and trendy 23rd.

Inside there is a waiting room with 12 people and room for ten. She was there for an hour and a half. I ducked out to find a better parking place, and when I came back I found out that we didn't have any way to pay for the shots, so ducked back out to find an ATM.

Trendy 23rd is one block away, and within a couple of blocks I find a Starbucks. The barista there kindly gives me precise directions to the US Bank, three blocks farther on. There are lots of shops all up and down 23rd, but I picked Starbucks thinking I would have better odds there of finding someone who knows the neighborhood, and I was right, or lucky. So often when I stop and ask for directions and I get someone who barely knows where they are, much less where anything else is. On the way to the bank I notice these two gas meters behind the glass in a flower shop. Never seen gas meters inside before.

Upon agreeing to their $3 charge, the ATM coughs up the requisite $200. $125 for Yellow Fever, $75 for Typhoid. Turns out the Typhoid immunization is not a shot, but four (count 'em, 4!) pills that need to be refrigerated. They give us an ice pack to keep them cold on the way home. A few minutes before we are finally able to leave the clinic a man pokes his head in the door sees all of us waiting in this tiny room, says "God Damn" and "Jesus", and leaves. I have to laugh, it's what exactly what I thought when I first came in the door.

Diagonally across the street from the clinic is this building,

which turns out to be Laika, the home of the movie Coraline.

Update January 2017 replaced missing pictures.