Samuel&#146;s posterous

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October 21, 2009

Portland, OR Street Sign Shop Circa 1916

From the 1916 book Municipal Engineering Practice, by A. Prescott Folwell, published by Wiley and Sons and made available to the world by Google Books. This book is now in the public domain.

This picture, on page 295, shows the inside of Portland's street sign shop with several signs either being made or ready for installation. The amazing thing is the signature Portland style of the time, which I would call a sort of grotesque, heavy strokes with clipped angles at the corners, similar to lettering seen on military equipment. The dark areas on the signs were a deep, dark blue.

This style survived on PDX street blades well into the middle third of the 20th Century, when they were replaced by white letterforms on green:

Thanks to fellow signster Eric Fischer (http://enf.livejournal.com/) for the find, which you can access at http://books.google.com/books?id=7AJLAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22street%20name%20signs%22&pg=PA295#v=onepage&q=%22street%20name%20signs%22&f=false ,

as well as download a complete PDF of the book, which is okay since it is, as mentioned, in the public domain.

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Samuel John Klein

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October 3, 2009

Vintage 1950s Oregon State Capitol Postcards

Anyone who knows me knows I'm silly in love with my native state's capitol building - the 1938 Oregon State Capitol, at 900 Court Street, NE, in Salem.

Yesterday, my wife found me two gorgeous postcards that I couldn't wait to share. They're undated, but my guess, based on what I can identify of the cars and the lack of one building, is that these were taken in the mid-to-late 1950s. This first one is taken from a vantage point from the top of the state Transportation Department building, one block north and a s'kosh east:

This next one is very telling as to date. In 1977, the Oregon State Capitol itself was expanded, extending the wings and adding space onto the back of the building (the south side fronts to Salem's State Street), principally for offices for the Oregon Legislature. That expansion is noticeably absent. But more importantly, there is a building in the next card, to the right and two blocks north, that isn't there – the State Labor and Industries building, which was finished in 1961.

The Oregon State Capitol Mall, which is what you have here, is a nifty and neat little constellation of state buildings with the Capitol as pride of place.

More information and attendant rattling can be found at my blog, http://zehnkatzen.blogspot.com, search for Capitol Mall.

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Samuel John Klein

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October 2, 2009

PDX Commercial History: The Tom Peterson & Gloria's Too Coffee Mug

One of my dreams is to find and acquire either the world-famous Tom Peterson Alarm Clock or the not-quite (but deserving-to-be) Tom Peterson wristwatch.

That dream remains as such, but … I did find something nifty. I give you … The Tom Peterson And Gloria's Too Coffee Mug, found this last Wednesday in a vintage shop somewhere up upper Hawthorne Blvd and purchased by ourselves for about two bucks. Here's a photeaux:

For those of you who weren't lucky enough to live in Portland during the Tom Peterson years, he was the quintessential Portland furniture and appliance salesman. A nice fellow by reputation, honest dealer, and born salesman, he charmed three generations of Portlanders with his inexpensively-done but enthusiastic late night ads on KPTV (especially the "Wake Up!" sale ads, where he kept the stores open all night, and made like he was knocking on the inside of your screen (nobody bought it, but it was fun to watch him act it out).

Tom's store closed last year, as my blog http://zehnkatzen.blogspot.com mentioned before anyone else (and almost everyone else ripped me off on without crediting). I miss him, I miss his commercials. It was a simpler time.

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Samuel John Klein

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September 28, 2009

Hungry Otter Is On Yr Line, Stealing Yr Fish

All thanks to http://twitter.com/TheSquare!

Another LOLOtter triumph!

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Samuel John Klein

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September 3, 2009

Graphic Design-Chart Quantifies Themes in Science Fiction Over Time

This chart, designed by Stephanie Fox at io9.com and used with permission (read the supporting document here at http://io9.com/5347631/at-last-a-graph-that-explains-scifi-tv-after-star-trek) gives a very engaging and thought-provoking look at the trends in science fiction and fantasy television after Star Trek.

To use it, just read across. For example, in 1972, we find that just one show that qualifies as F&SF television show aired: Doomwatch, and the popular hot theme for the hear was Magic and Robots (which appeared on the most shows).

As the SF&F television popularity peaked throughout the end of the 90s, the most popular theme became Aliens & Mutants with Magic taking up a close second position. I don't know about anybody else observing this, but to me it's interesting that Space Travel, far and away the most popular defining characteristic of SF, doesn't often make it as the hot trend.

To really pack a punch an idea would be to add to this a timeline that shows significant historical events during those times, but in any event, the trends of what's popular and what's hot does tend to be interesting in and of itself.

And the design itself is simply engaging.

Enjoy.

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Samuel John Klein

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August 27, 2009

How The Internet Sees Samuel Klein – and Samuel John Klein

Part of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit on display now at the MIT Museum (http://web.mit.edu/museum/exhibitions/connections/), Personas (http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html) is a critique of data mining. It searches the net for the input name (which may or may not be yours – you can put any string into the query box (and then uses an analytical method to make a bunch of assumptions of what you're all about based on what it's analyzed.

Putting Samuel Klein into the query box produced the following, which I assume is composite of assumed interest categories, weighted by the relevance of the terms. Since there are, actually, a relative armload of Samuel Kleins in the noosphere (one is a prominent Wikipedian, the other a leading authority on obesity) the composite Samuel Klein according to the net its kind of me, and kind of really not me at all:

Then I decided to put in my middle name (it said put in first name and last name but didn't say you couldn't put in the last). This looks much more me, though there is some anomaly inherent:

Such as, whatever the hell is "aggression" supposed to mean? And many words have been applied to me, but this is the only place you'll ever see me associated with "fashion" in anything other than an unironic way.

Which I think is the point. Data mining is probably happening. It tells a story-but does it tell the appropriate one (most likely, not, or at best, partially).

Something to think about.

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Samuel John Klein

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August 12, 2009

Separated At Birth: The 2001: A Space Odyssey EVA pod – And TriMet's New MAX Train?

I mean, you be the judge:

Kinda eerie, if you ask me.

"Open the car doors, HAL."

"I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that. There is no point in continuing this discussion further. Goodbye, Dave."

B-)

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Samuel John Klein

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August 11, 2009

Photos From the TriMet MAX Green Line Preview Ride

Yesterday, me and my wife and a few hundred of our closest friends got a preview ride on the Green Line of Portland's MAX transit train, opening next month. Here are a handful of the ones I like the best:

1)The signage uses the most amazing, well-chosen, font and style:

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Samuel John Klein