Yesterday and today have been rainy, rainy, rainy (except for right now, now that we’re home of course and it seems to be sunny for a second;)
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(ask James sometime how wet his socks were in this picture, ha)
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Since COVID, Portland has had a sweet “street plaza” program, where streets can be turned into these lovely, pedestrian-and-hangout-focused third spaces, the idea being to “repurpose streets for public space to benefit both businesses and the community.” There’s a whole map of all of them on that website if you poke around — plus, a list of events happening in the plazas, which I didn’t know was a thing until I started looking just now.
This plaza in particular is called the “Ankeny Rainbow Road,” and it usually has lots of seating of various kinds, cute strings of hanging lights, and is a spot where folks can spill out from the surrounding businesses to eat their pastries or lunch and drink their coffee or beer and hang out with their friends and dogs and whatever else.
I was sad to see that right now it is bereft of such amenities, I think because of the construction that has been working its way east on SE Ankeny for the past month or two (I think there’s a giant new pipe under that section of road that is no longer painted rainbow). I actually took a picture of it on Feb 9th, though, that I considered using for my picture of the day then but didn’t. I’ll put here for contrast so you can see what it usually looks like:)
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(less rainy on the 9th, too;)
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I hope it comes back to its usual glory soon! I love these sweet plazas very much:)