Waddling Through March: The Results Are IN!

158.3 miles on 26 walks--26 days out of 31. Take that, Professor Javier Boleyn!

Beaumont-Wilshire: Where the Kids on Alberta Think We Live

As you may know, me and Dolly-girl set our brake in the part of town that is just about smack-dab on the convergence of Woodlawn, Vernon, and Concordia--let's call in Woodnoncordia. Actually, I can call it anything I want since you don't care and are just wondering where I'm going with this anyway. Well, here's were I'm going. Beaumont-Wilshire. "Hey, Dolly-girl, I'm off on my waddle. See you in a couple hours." "Give my regards to Radio Room, Jack." I headed out the door, turned right, then left then right then left, and before you know it, I'd passed the Alberta Arts district, which is a young hipsters' hang-out and was in Beaumont-Wilshire, which is not, as evidenced by the sign to the left. This is where the young hipsters who hang out in the Alberta Arts district think me and Dolly-girl live.




Woodnoncordia is close to the Alberta Arts district. That's where you see things like in the Kodaks to the left. Not things like "The Arrangement."






Beaumont-Wilshire's got themselves one of those Starbucks places that you definitely do not, and I mean DO NOT see in the Alberta Arts district, thank the Lord. I did notice that they had a couple joints like what you might of seen where Dolly-girl set the brake on her pram. And I noticed that they have a joint that is making beer and selling it too.










I turned left and waddled south from Beaumont-Wilshire past rows of neat houses with Subarus and Hondas, you know, the sort of houses and cars that the young hipsters in the Alberta Arts district think me and Dolly-girl live in and drive but which we don't. Before long, I was down the ridge and into what people in Portland call the Hollywood District, I think because there is a giant movie marquee that says "Hollywood" rather than because they make movies and have a lot of stars hanging around. Anyhoo, Hollywood is where you go if you want to find someone who knows how to plant you the old fashioned way--The Ross Hollywood Chapel, which is just another way to say Funerals and Cremations, which it says in the small print on their sign. I never realized that the two were, what would Dolly-girl call it, umm, mutually exclusive. Yes, that's what she would say.



I waddled on down Sandy Boulevard, noticing the extent of what I call "urban fragmentation" but I'm pretty sure people who study "urban fragmentation" don't. By "urban fragmentation" I mean how you can end up with a bunch of short blocks and wide streets and crossing lights that really slow a waddler down when a guy is trying to maintain a 4 mile-per-hour pace. I'm not sure what all those scholarly papers on "urban fragmentation" are about...





I saw a few more interesting things, like this guy whose job it is to dress up like the Statue of Liberty and wave a sign at people to try and get them to just stop in to have their taxes done on a whim I guess. I didn't stop. Didn't look like anyone else was either. Not a heck of a lot of resemblance between the tax-service guy and La Liberté éclairant le monde, but it made me really glad that I didn't have his job. Might have been a her, but I think it was a guy based on the fact that he put the "OPEN EARLY" sign down upside down while adjusting his rays and I think a girl would have put it down right-side-up. Just a gut feeling. Statue of Liberty photo © somebody else on Wikipedia




I waddled past Tony Starlight's, subject of a previous writing of mine, and the place where me and Dolly-girl and some others are headed on St. Paddy's Day.








Finally, I'd waddled full circle and was right back to the Alberta Arts district where the young hipsters don't think we live near to but we do. I was cruising along, headed for that pot-o-gold known as India Pale Ale at the end of the Radio Room Rainbow when my eyes spied something and my head jerked around like I'd been hit with a left hook. I knew Dolly-girl took that Banksy movie to seriously...