Transit Modality Decision Overload - Picture of the Day

A plethora of transit options at the South Waterfront campus of Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. (Photo by Bill Lascher).

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Introducing the Thinkingest Podcast

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing: The Thinkingest.*

[audio:http://lascheratlarge.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/The-Thinkingest-Episode-1.mp3]

What's The Thinkingest? It's my new podcast! Every other Wednesday the Thinkingest will feature me and a special guest star doing what I do best: overthinking some element of modern life. Subscribe on iTunes or with your favorite podcasting tool.

This week's launch edition features Michael Andersen, the publisher and janitor of Portland Afoot, Portland's 10-minute newsmagazine on buses, bikes and low-car life. In this week's conversation, Michael and I discuss crowdfunding projects (Watch the video below or check out this link to support the campaign to make Portland Afoot free), creativity, craps, video games as a metaphor for life, and other digressions.

Meanwhile, each podcast is a lighthearted discussion of the ways I overthink oh-so-many situations in this world. I suspect this isn't a unique trait, so each issue will also feature guests doing something related to or interested in a topic I'm overthinking. They might be fellow over-thinkers, or they might have all the answers that will help me silence my mind. Subjects to expect include careers, style, food, romance, social graces, holidays, travel, finances, fitness and anything else that might be on my mind. But don't expect strict adherence to these topics, and conversations could wander any which way.

Like what you hear? Say so in the comments here and review it on iTunes. Also let me know what you're overthinking and if you'd like to be a guest on a future edition of the Thinkingest.

Oh, also, I'd love a logo, though I have nothing to offer for one at the moment but my appreciation and a constant tip of my hat.

Here's Portland Afoot's video. I heartily endorse this awesome project!

*Possibly tentative title. Have something more palatable? Like "Thinkingest?" Any other comments? Let me know in the comments.

Along for the Ride: Streetcar Music Festival

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Guitars, cellos, saxophones, toy pianos; how could I not include the Streetcar Mobile Music Fest as this week's Along for the Ride?

Click play to listen: [audio:http://lascheratlarge.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Along-for-the-Ride-Portland-Streetcar-Mobile-MusicFest.mp3|titles=Along for the Ride - Portland Streetcar Mobile Music Fest]

Hosted by PDX Pop Now!, The New Rail~Volutionaries, Women's Transportation Seminar and Portland Streetcar, Inc., the event featured musicians performing aboard various streetcars throughout the night. As Art Pearce told Portland Afoot's Michael Andersen, it was the "Sunday Parkways of transit." Instead of reading about it here, why not listen to what it was like when I went Along for the Ride? While you're listening, click here to take a glance at my photos, which you can see after the jump (you can also find out how to contribute a few bucks to keep "Along for the Ride." alive).

I can't say the experience was a normal glimpse at everyday life aboard the streetcar, but it did seem to entertain two distinct groups of people: regular streetcar riders who stumbled upon the musicians as they explored Downtown and Northwest Portland, and an audience who came out specifically for the event. Some rode the entire length to listen to a particular musician's full set. Others, like me, hopped from streetcar to streetcar for a chance to experience the variety of performances. Indeed, I became so focused on listening to the music that I nearly forget I was riding the streetcar, and definitely lost track of which neighborhoods I was in when. Click any of the images to enlarge and start a slideshow. [shashin type="albumphotos" id="7" size="small" crop="y" columns="4" caption="y" order="date" position="center"]

Along for the Ride: Max Blue Line 1 -- Hillsboro

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This week's installment of Along for the Ride, my series of weekly chronicles of Portland, OR-area transit lines. is an audio postcard from a rush hour trip aboard the MAX Blue Line to Hillsboro. In a future edition, I'll explore the rest of the line, from Downtown Portland, east to Gresham.

Listen to the Story

[audio:http://lascheratlarge.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Along-For-The-Ride-Max-Blue-Line-to-Hillsboro.mp3|titles=Along For The Ride - Max Blue Line to Hillsboro]

Along for the Ride is an evolving experiment in exploring Portland's transit system. I'm excited to hear what you have to say about it. If you like this project or if you hate it, why not let me know? Comment! Share the project on your social networks. Participate by suggesting routes to take and things to see along the way, or anything else you think might improve this project. And, if you want to make it more possible for me to ride more often, and to take time doing these stories, why not offer a few dollars? Just click below.

Along for the Ride: Island Time Aboard the 85

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Welcome to the second week of Along for the Ride, my series of weekly chronicles of Portland, OR-area transit lines. If you haven't already, check out the first edition and if you like the series, please spread the word, or even cover my bus fare.

This week, I woke early Wednesday morning intending to ride Line 85 commuters travelling to work in the warehouses and distribution centers of Swan Island. Transformed into a peninsula in the 1920s after a multi-year dredging effort, the island once housed Portland's airport and was an important shipbuilding center during World War II. It's now a major industrial area.

I visited a touch too late in my morning (boarding my first bus a little after 8 a.m.) to experience the daily commute. That just means I'll eagerly anticipate a future "Along for the Ride" entry about the Swan Island Transportation Management Association's free evening shuttle. For now, though, it's time to come along for the ride:

Moments in Transit

8:12 a.m.: Arrive at the Rose Quarter Transit Center. Watch a couple fight. Wait with a man clad head to toe in red clothing and a woman in a green dress chatting energetically on a cell phone. Get disappointed when they all board a different bus. Finally board with six other passengers seven minutes later.

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8:21: Realize I violated a central tenet of multimedia journalism. My audio recorder battery dies just as the ride starts. Silver lining: Next week I'll have a better, easier to use recorder and, more importantly, more familiarity with the ABC - Always Be Charging - rule.

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8:30: The bus gets lonely as three passengers leave. [shashin type="photo" id="185" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

8:36: Disembark at Fathom and Basin while watching UPS Drivers start their morning dance. [shashin type="photo" id="187" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

8:37: Begin wandering aimlessly. [shashin type="photo" id="192" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

8:59: Take obligatory cliché photographs of abandoned rail line.

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9:09: Make a gruesome discovery.

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9:12: Heed warnings at a boat launch.[shashin type="photo" id="195" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

9:13: Wait, maybe the warnings were unnecessary.

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9:14: See, they're fishing. [shashin type="photo" id="198" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

9:17: Lust for a life at sea. [shashin type="photo" id="197" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

9:28: Wait for the next bus along Basin Blvd. Wait ten more minutes. Finally decide to actually, you know, look at schedule. Start walking again. Wish I'd taken Daimler's suggestion earlier. [shashin type="photo" id="199" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

9:50: Hit the beach! [shashin type="photo" id="200" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

10:01: Return to the real world. [shashin type="photo" id="201" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="center"]

Along for the Ride: Going Live on the 75

[shashin type="photo" id="202" size="320" columns="max" order="user" position="left"] Today marks the public launch of "Along for the ride,"* a new series of mass transit adventure chronicles on Lascher at Large.

Watch an Audio Slideshow | Explore the Map | See the Photo Gallery

The concept: explore Portland as seen from the metropolitan region's transit lines. Each week, through a highly scientific selection process (in other words a combination of my mood, any errands I may have to run, suggestions from the peanut gallery and other such extremely formal criteria), I'll be riding the full length -- each direction -- of one of Tri-Met's bus or rail lines (and perhaps those of surrounding transportation authorities, like Clark County's C-Tran). Who knows what I'll experience along the way or what I'll observe, or even what form my storytelling will take? Learn more about the project, how to support it, or how to come along for the ride at the end of this post.

For this inaugural week, I rode Line 75, a megaroute running from St. Johns through much of North, Northeast and Southeast Portland, all the way to Milwaukie (for the non-Oregonians among you, that's a city immediately south of Portland, not the alternately-spelled lakeside Wisconsin metropolis). For a taste of the route, check out the following audio slideshow. The speaker was a slightly counter-culture, late middle-aged man who identified himself as Robert. Reflecting on Portland's public transit system and his regular commute to and from St. Johns, this afternoon, Robert, who refused to give his last name, accompanied family on a trip from Portland's Woodstock neighborhood North to Burnside Blvd.

Before you read the rest of the story, listen to what Robert has to say about riding the 75, check out some images I snapped along the route, and even enjoy a moment of riparian pleasure, all brought to you by the 75:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4zCJR3l6OE

A tale of two Wunderlands

You ride, And ride, And ride, Only at the end do you know the purpose of your trip.

One of twelve current "Frequent Service" Tri-Met bus routes -- those designed to run every quarter-hour -- the 75 averages intervals of about 17 minutes, according to the Portland Afoot Wiki.

I didn't time the 75 when I rode it this week. I happened to arrive at its door just before it left Pier Park in St. Johns. Such details will have to be saved for Portland Afoot, or perhaps for future installments of this series. Anyhow, though I originally envisioned "Along for the Ride" as a series of journalistic accounts of individual transit lines, this first trip devolved into more of a solitary journey, albeit one in which my commitment to my profession was redeemed by the discoveries I made along the route.

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My ride along the 75 started quietly. I barely made it on board. I don't live by either end of the line, and my path to Pier Park, the route's northern terminus, will remain a closely-guarded secret. What I can reveal: It involved an unidentified second transit line and a pedestrian meander to throw off would-be followers. I can, however, say I saw the biggest dog I've ever seen in my life along the way.

Anyhow, when I arrived the bus was empty aside from the older woman grilling the driver for details about how to make her connection. Despite the driver's insistence that there would be plenty of warning before the woman's required stop, she didn't seem convinced, and the full-speed run I made to board the bus started to seem unnecessary. But I made it.

Before long we were on Lombard. A bunch of teenagers boarded at the first stop. One sat in the seats across the way from me. He was easily too cool for school. Every few seconds he'd erupt with smirking mirth. That wasn't minimized by my donning of gigantic headphones as I slowly moved a cheap, underwhelming Radio Shack microphone around to pick up ambient sound (read, cacophonous static roughly reminiscent of rattling windows and engine noises). Already too shy for a journalist, I decided that wasn't the time for an interview, and packed everything but my camera away.

This was the first instance of a dilemma that persisted throughout the day. People rarely want to be spoken with on buses, even less so than on the street, or so I led myself to believe. They don earbuds, they stick their noses into books, they sigh after a long day at work, they text friends, they flirt and gossip and stare intently out the window. Perhaps, at least for this first trip, the best way to experience transit in Portland was to do just that: experience it, fully.

So I took in the city as it passed. St. Johns' mid-century downtown brimmed with summertime pedestrians. Friends met for coffee. Photographers ducked into a camera shop. Moms and dads pushed strollers. I saw one of two fencing halls I'd see along the 75.

It was the first of many pairs. The camera shop -- Blue Moon Camera and Machine -- also boasts typewriter repairs, and only a few blocks southeast, we'd also pass Ace Typewriter, possibly one of the only full-service typewriter maintenance businesses left in the entire country. Eventually, the bus passed two Trader Joe's locations and two bowling alleys and not one, but two Wunderlands.

As it turns out, the two places I decided to get off the bus -- in Portland's Belmont neighborhood and Downtown Milwaukie -- brought me a short stroll from two Wunderland Arcades. Sadly I lacked in nickels and competitors for air hockey, skee-ball, and scads of ticket-spewing games. Beyond the Wunderlands, which also feature second-run movie theaters, Line 75 passed, or stopped within a few blocks' walk of, multiple cinemas, including the Baghdad, the Hollywood Theatre, and both of St. John's movie houses.

Even more plentiful than movie theaters were parks. Big parks, little parks, dog parks, boring parks, fun parks, ugly parks, pretty parks, the 75 stopped near them all (actually, I don't recall any particularly ugly or boring ones. They're parks, after all). Parks too constrained for you? Why not take the 75 to the Springwater Corridor trailhead at Johnson Creek? Or head out on the water? Though I didn't realize it at the time, my trip on the 75 was taking me to the river.

Summertime, and the Living is Easy

Upon arriving at the route's terminus in Milwaukie, I headed out for a stroll. The day was far too beautiful not to do so. Of all the ways I'm nerdy, I'm not a comic-book reader. Were I so, I might have been thrilled to pass the headquarters of Dark Horse Comics (though the Darth Vader posters on the window were enough to excite the Star Wars nerd within). But my nerd-dom lies elsewhere, so I continued on toward a glistening shoreline I spied from Milwaukie's Main Street.

I soon forgot about it all -- the storefronts, the bus, my frustration with not interviewing anyone -- when I reached the shores of the Willamette. There, dogs played, boaters launched, office workers strolled in khakis and button-ups and old men surveyed the landscape from recumbent bicycles flying hot pink banners. Summer surrounded.

It only continued. On my way to the water I'd passed the Main St. Collectors Mall and Soda Fountain, and I stopped in before re-boarding the bus home. Like any antique mall, its shelves were stuffed with pan-decade nostalgia -- Star Wars Toys, World War II memorabilia, old record collections -- but it featured an extra treat: the counter of a former Rexall Department Store -- also known as Perry's Pharmacy -- where a family laughed over phosphates and hot dogs and an elderly mother treated her adult daughter to an ice cream cone. It was as if no one had ever moved. My only regret: not shooting the scene when I first glimpsed it through one of the store's aisles. I did, however, enjoy my lunch and my dessert of chocolate peanut butter ice cream in a sugar cone.

This was no longer a bus ride. This was a journey. With a $4.75 day pass, I'd wandered across a metropolis, stopped for snacks and a stroll in a hip neighborhood (I'd grabbed a bite on Belmont Ave.), run an errand for a friend, and found myself on a quiet shoreline, where water lapped at my feet, dogs played fetch, kids laughed from inner tubes pulled behind motorboats and the world slowed down, if only for a moment.

More Transiting Portland Each Week

What's "Along for the Ride?" It's my evolving series of Portland-area mass transit chronicles. For the next, well, for the next long while I'll be riding a new Tri-Met operated transit line. By new, I mean new to me. I'm beginning with lines I've never ridden, then I'll move on to riding other lines I have taken, until I've ridden every bus, railway and shuttle operated by Tri-Met (and possibly routes on other public transit systems near and far, should the situation arise). Expect stories along the way. What kind of stories? I can't quite be certain. Some newsy. Some reflective. Some only possible in the moment. Expect guest stars too. Perhaps expect to even come along yourself.

I expect Along for the Ride to also be a laboratory for new (to me) storytelling practices and a chance for me to hone audio recording, photography, videography, interviewing, mapping, writing, editing and other skills. Don't be surprised if different forms are used to tell stories from week to week, though it's conceivable the series will find its own rhythm, just as transit has its own pace.

You can help set that rhythm, however. You can start by getting involved. Tell me about your reflections of transit or via a tweet to @billlascher. If you use public transit, what do you use it for? What transit lines do you ride and why? If you don't use public transit, explain why not. What might change your opinion about using transit, whether you currently use it or not? I want to know about transit in any city -- after all, my love affair with transit writing started in LA, where transportation policy became the focus of my graduate studies -- so why not reflect on your town's best or worst routes?

For those of you familiar with particular Tri-Met lines, why not suggest in the comments what lines I should try next? Do you know of great stops along the way? If so, enter them on the map. Do you have a favorite transit story? Why not share some here, though I don't want to step on the toes of Michael Andersen, and the great stories in each edition of his incomparable Portland Afoot (By the way, if you need something to read on the bus, or anywhere else you happen to be, I bet your $5 subscription or other support will be well worth it).

*By the way, special thanks to writer Christina Cooke for devising this series' title, "Along for the Ride." Check out Christina's work at christinacooke.com.

Click on any image to enlarge:

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New rankings beg question: what makes Portland sustainable?

Portland-based Sustainable Business Oregon reported yesterday that Stumptown once again won silver in Site Selection Magazine's Rankings of the nation's most sustainable metropolitan communities.

Once again coming in second to the Bay Area (Site Selection's lede about San Francisco's ban on unsolicited Yellow Pages was cornily fantastic), Portland ranked high alongside Oregon, which came in third on the list of "Top Sustainable States." Congratulations!

But is praise premature? Subjectively, we're probably not going out on a limb to gauge Portland and its neighbors among the nation's most sustainable communities. There exists here an unquantifiable, do-it-yourself, simple approach I like to call Portland's "Pot-luck" culture, where many groups bring their diverse skills and resources to the table. We're all now quite well aware of the bike culture and transportation alternatives and ecoroofs and every other bright green badge of pride we wear. Meanwhile, as I detailed in the May, 2011 issue of Biocycle (Subscription Required) Portland has many more concrete sustainable projects in food scraps composting, urban gardening and new, private efforts like the upcoming June Key Delta Community Center (which was featured in a sidebar with the Biocycle story).

Nevertheless, are we measuring sustainability properly here, or anywhere? To rank the top metro areas, Site Selection used the number and per capita rate of LEED Certified green building projects, the extent of green incentives and amount of manufacturing and other facilities involved in renewables and green industry. Can our ability to live healthily, prosperously and durably over multiple generations (my rough definition of sustainability) be gauged by simply totaling up new construction and how many gizmos it features, dollars spent, and the new kilowatt-hour reducing technology we build? Or should our analysis be a little more complex? Should we explore our actual behaviors, i.e., the actual effectiveness of the programs we incent, the way our buildings - LEED or not - get used and the type of demands we place on our power grid? Wouldn't that be the real measure of sustainability?

My un-scientific, un-journalistic assumption is that Portland would probably end up pretty far ahead on that sort of scale as well, but we -- everyone, but particularly journalists reporting on the environment -- might be well served by asking these sort of questions.

What do you think? Are we measuring sustainability properly? Is Portland "Green?" What do you think is the most sustainable community?

Let me know in the comments

Where should green planning efforts come from?

Photo of Portland bike lane courtesy Flickr user Eric Fredericks

This week's post for High Country News's "A Just West" blog explored discussions that came out of last week's Ecodistricts Summit in Portland. Check it out here or read it -- and many other great stories -- on HCN.

Hundreds of urban planners, architects, developers,  environmentalists, entrepreneurs and policymakers danced around this  question last week as they convened on Portland for the second annual Ecodistricts Summit.

Hosted by the Portland Sustainability Institute (PoSI), the  event complements a maturing experiment to make five of the Oregon  metropolis's neighborhoods into "Ecodistricts," neighborhoods designed  to be more sustainable.

Though the ecodistricts concept is defined differently in different  cities, in Portland they are built around developing ambitious  sustainability goals that stakeholders in a strictly designated  neighborhood commit to meeting. These goals might include capitalizing  on district  energy to limit the need for power generation from outside the  neighborhood, encouraging transit oriented development and walkability,  or establishing neighborhood-wide building efficiency standards.

But backers of all sustainable growth projects need to focus more on  building community support, said John Knott, the president and  CEO of Noisette LLC, which is working on a sustainable restoration  project in the lower-income area of North Charleston, South Carolina.  Ambitious energy efficiency goals and other high tech solutions to  environmental problems will fail if they come without the buy-in from  communities who are just trying to make ends meet.

"We have a huge social mess we have created in the last 40 years,”  Knott said in the event's opening panel, referring to the segregation of  communities by income, lack of access to environmental amenities by  many low-income neighborhoods, and the problems of gentrification and  urban flight. “If we don't fix that, we will have a revolution and it  will be justified.”

It's rare to hear a developer publicly stress the need to  rearrange underlying social structures. As Knott noted, the problem of  poor planning and design doesn't just face urban areas. He believes  people will flee suburbs, putting further strain on central cities without solving growing economic imbalances.

Portland's own proposed ecodistricts weren't identified internally by residents clamoring for greener planning.  Among other motivations for their selection, each is already part of an  urban renewal area set for infusions of redevelopment funds.

One of them, the largely commercial Lloyd  District, will be one of the first to experiment with an ecodistrict  designation. It will model its efforts on the success of a previous  project, a transportation management association that corralled  investments in mass transit infrastructure and developed incentives that  encouraged office workers to take transit or ride bikes to work, said  Rick Williams, the TMA's executive director. Now the district wants to  replicate the TMA's success with a “sustainability management  association” to set the new ecodistrict's goals.

The first steps toward defining sustainable development goals for  the neighborhood won't include everyone who lives and works there,  though. Instead, Williams said, the first step requires targeting major  land owners to sign “declarations of collaboration” on the ecodistricts  project.

“We believe we have to start with developers because we know them  and because they have bigger checkbooks,” Williams said. “The real key  to this is getting key stakeholders in the room and defining targets  before we start talking about solutions.”

Williams is right. You can't solve a problem without defining it.  When we're talking about sustainability, though, are property owners and  major institutions really the only “key stakeholders?”

Probably  not. Green initiatives don't mean anything if behaviors don't change,  and it's hard to change behaviors among people left out of the  decision-making process. Some of the organizers of Portland's ecodistrict movement get this. Tim Smith, a principal and director of  urban design for Portland Architecture Firm SERA touts a concept of a  “Civic Ecology.”

“We're in danger as an expert class of creating a bunch of great  green hardware where we have an ignorant citizenry that is obliged to  buy this stuff, as opposed to having citizenry own their  sustainability,” Smith said.

Most people in the sustainability and environmental movements  know there's a need for equity, justice and economic opportunity, but  they don't have clear models for providing opportunities to marginalized  communities, said Alan Hipólito, the executive directory of Verde,  which works in the Portland neighborhood of Cully to build links between  economic health and sustainability though job training, employment and  entrepreneurial opportunities. Cully is not included among the five officially designated ecodistricts.

Hipólito was the first to explicitly discuss the risk of  gentrification, though it was implied by others during the three-day  event (a point also discussed in a post about the summit in  the Portland Architecture blog).

“Our sustainability movement makes investments in certain people and  places,” Hipólito said. “This movement has not prioritized diversity.”

He  said residents of his neighborhood have joined together at a grassroots  level to address Cully's lack of environmental wealth, mostly from  within, without being directed by outside organizations.

“From our perspective, it means investing in assets that meet  community needs as an anti-poverty strategy first that's going to  automatically build environmental benefits in an area,” Hipólito said.

Statistics  from the Regional Equity Atlas, a project organized by the Coalition  for a Livable Future, reveal that 18 percent of the neighborhood's  residents live in poverty, about twice the regional average. Access to  parkland is far below the regional average, and access to natural  habitats is even worse. That's why Verde gets developers to sign  community benefit agreements that provide well-paying jobs – many to  minority and women owned businesses – on projects that keep what  resources – even unconventional ones like district heat – in Cully.

“When you put all this together we suddenly discover we're making an ecodistrict, so we've decided to call it that,” Hipólito.

Portland  isn't alone among cities toying with ecodistricts. Denver's Living City  Block and the Seattle 2030 District, for example, share ambitious goals  to slash energy usage and promote economically revitalized urban  districts. Each also relies on partnerships with property owners, and  that top-down focus leaves me wondering how engaged those cities'  citizens will be in positioning their communities as models for global  change.

I'm not suggesting that large property owners and developers  shouldn't be engaged. Clearly they're important stakeholders, but it  seems like the most successful approaches – like the one already  underway in Cully – secure the participation of the entire community  first.

Photo of Portland bike lane courtesy Flickr user Eric Fredericks.

Ducking the Elephant in the Room

The day takes shape slowly. Getting out the door just happens. Once you do the bus is ten minutes late. Then, so is the MAX, but you don't mind. You've been quietly extricating yourself from time. You wait in the chill beneath an interstate, listening to teenagers gossip. Staring at the spikes lining the steel beams beneath the roadway you think perhaps a bit too long about pigeon deterrence.

Boarding the wide slick new cars of the Green Line, you laugh occasionally at a Wait Wait Don't Tell Me podcast and take another stab at the crossword you started two days prior. Disembarking in Lents, you pass a crop of green, swirling, solar panel-topped sculptures, walk beyond cold, new planters toward Foster Road and gaze on Lincoln's giant face on the side of the New Copper Penny.

This landscape is neither foreign nor familiar, a domestic banlieue swept to the edge of the green movement's model city.

The mission is murky at best. You walk west under another freeway, looking for a well-reviewed video game merchant you found online. It's not clear why you went this far. You don't play games often enough to make them a destination, though you suspect the entire point was to ask just such questions. Wedged next to a 7-11, the store is smaller than you imagined, as cluttered and cramped inside as the clamoring chaos of the intersection between which it's squeezed. A man lingers at the counter, trying to squeeze pennies from the business as he sells old games. There are too many people in the store. Despite nostalgia stirred by the pile of old NES games all you want to do is leave. Asking a quick question of the clerk, he assumes you're there to make a trade and for some reason won't look in your eyes when he talks with you. Nothing in the store interests you enough to make a purchase.

Not quite ready for lunch, you head the other way beneath the freeway to see if you can find some sort of treasure to justify the journey. Past a barber shop and tiny antique shop and a handful of businesses closed for the weekend, all you can see in the distance is a long road.

You turn back toward the MAX line, but can't ignore a taqueria down a side street. Inside, fake pepper and onion and garlic plants line the ceiling. Elephant statues raise their trunks from every surface behind the counter. They're outnumbered only by ducks. Rubber ducks. Ceramic mallards. Wooden drakes and plastic hens. Ducks. Everywhere.

Everything else is as traditional as taquerias seem anywhere. Staticy TV stations play spanish-language music videos. Hand-written specials fill a dry-erase board. A dozen bottles of hot sauces and salsas sit on the edge of every table. The red, white and green of the Mexican flag on the wall mirrors the facade's paint job.

You make your order quickly, and simply. Tacos. One pollo, one pastor, and one cabeza.

You sit down at a middle booth, ponder discoveries and road trips and that burning itch to travel. When you pull from your bag the latest issue of Harper's, it opens to an excerpt from a writer who spent five weeks in residency at London's Heathrow Airport. He describes arrivals. Expectancy. The cultural filters thousands of us pass through each and every day. Crunching tortilla chips and hot salsa you sink into the words, wishing you wrote that way, or that you could be there, documenting the everyday, spinning it into lush, rich language.

A family comes through the door, led by a girl of no more than seven hobbling on a cane. She's dwarfed by the boisterous entry of her oversized relatives. They settle into the larger table in the middle of the room. You find yourself inching away as one sits near you, the slightly unpleasant odor of her exhaustion hitting your nostrils just as your meal arrives.

Embarrassed by your quick judgment, you let the discomfort pass and eavesdrop on their cheerful Saturday afternoon conversation. They plan errands. The mother recalls a long-passed uncle's favorite foods. The boys and girls chirp. A man, a boyfriend or brother or son, sits at the head of the table and doesn't utter a word. Not one. The women talk about an 18-year-old niece's thwarted hopes to hire a male stripper. The $150 cost of the house-call is too high and she's too young to go to the 21-and-over club in town with male exotic dancers. Mother and daughter and aunt discuss the situation as the younger kids laugh and joke, oblivious. It doesn't seem anything is resolved, except the family's decision to include tacos with breaded fried beef in their order.

You sprinkle a little too much habenero sauce on top of your second taco, the chicken. A middle-class couple walks in. The woman is cute, blonde, maybe mid-30's and wearing a long, knit sweater-jacket. Her partner is about the same age, with a meticulously cropped red beard around his chin and a tight, pastel green t-shirt from another Northwestern metropolis. They ponder the menu and make their orders. They're loud, somehow more so than the sum cacophony of the family, which somehow seems to have gained even more members in the fifteen minutes or so they've been in the restaurant.

You turn your attention away and sip your lime Jarritos. A waiter offers more tortilla chips. Though you decline, on each of your remaining five or six you carefully dab a few drops of a different sauce to find just the right one for your last taco. The name of the favorite escapes you now, but you sprinkle it carefully on the taco, only a touch so as not to overpower the pork.

Taking a bite, you sit back in the booth and notice another herd of elephant figurines in the corner.

Making the most of making the media

I arrived in Los Angeles late Monday afternoon. As I landed, I watched the sunset turn the Santa Monica Mountains that golden hue they turn in late fall, caught glimpses of the skyscrapers along Wilshire Blvd., marveled at the sheer everywhereness of it all and traced a line from the Hollywood sign down to the corner of Hollywood and Vine, where, nearly a century ago, my great-great-grandfather's decision to rent a barn on his sprawling ranch to two young filmmakers for $250 a month might have made much of the city's role as a media mecca possible. The tableau pulled at my heart, one more landing in a city I've called home for only a year, but which has been in my blood for five generations.

For years, though, as I hinted in a post last Spring, I've danced with another city. Over the past week, the motions became more certain, thanks in part to the energy I tapped into at the We Make the Media Conference at the University of Oregon's Turnbull Portland Center.

Thoughts about the future raced through my mind as my plane descended. Some of these thoughts are familiar to the world at large. Some are personal. When it comes to Saturday's conference, I've had to take some time to digest, get back home, and prepare my next steps. They include returning to Portland very soon — and more permanently — in part to join the community of mediamakers who emerged at the conference.

Finding community

I want to reiterate this word “community.” For whatever it's worth, however hokey it might be dismissed as, I found community on Saturday. In a way I haven't been able to say for quite some time, I've found my people, at least my people for this moment. Perhaps I'm just famished, but I just haven't found these people in Los Angeles.

I'm emphasizing this for a reason. For all the critiques I have of We Make the Media, and all the many more already so eloquently articulated by other thinkers (Click here for a list of the reflections I've found, some of which I'm responding to here), I'm stunned by how, a few days later, I remain invigorated by the event. Like Abraham Hyatt and many others, I left the event quite drained, but now feel energized. Though the event may not have gone in the direction organizers hoped, perhaps it was a success anyhow.

A sort of “sub-organizer” of the event, Hyatt was the first to bring it to my attention. I know, as others do, that he put a great deal of work into both making it happen, as he does in other efforts cultivating Portland's media community. So I looked to him first for his dissection of what went right and what went wrong at the conference.

Despite my hopefulness, significant concerns emerged. As much as I felt I found community, I was as troubled as others about the limits to the pool from which I could derive that community. As Hyatt admitted, conference organizers may not have made enough of an effort to reach out to community media or to media that “reflected the racial diversity of Portland:”

“We were lucky to have KBOO come on as a sponsor a few days before the conference. But what if that had happened a few weeks before? Who else could we have invited? And how would that dialogue have shaped the planning of the event? If we’re going to create a media organization that breaks out of the old news models, we need to be including people from outside traditional media outlets.”

I don't think I'll write much more about this issue right now. Hyatt acknowledges the problem succinctly, and others have addressed racial diversity far more effectively than I may be able to. Please do continue to discuss the topic. I want to be part of a growing, inclusive media community and I want to know how I can work to enable that inclusiveness.

Stopping to breathe

What I do feel comfortable discussing is technology, connectivity, and other forms of inclusiveness. Many have discussed the “Twitter corner” that emerged — largely for reasons of proximity to power outlets and the wi-fi access-granting powers of Suzi Steffen — as if it was a breakaway counter-conference. That's not entirely true, and I'll get back to that point.

Early in the day, Steffen complained on Twitter about the lack of a projection of the live Twitter stream that emerged at the event. I agree that a common Twitter hashtag (which, of course, became #wmtm) and information about wi-fi access should have been announced before the event. The digital element of the conference felt like an afterthought, and it's rather astounding that an effort largely inspired by nonprofit journalism endeavors in Minnesota and San Diego, Web-only endeavors, did not have online elements that didn't feel like afterthoughts.

That said, I don't know if I agree with Steffen's concerns about the lack of a projected twitter stream. Yes, it may have kept the entire crowd informed about the discussion happening online, but I wonder whether this is a great example of how Twitter should be a platform people choose to participate in or not (During an early Twitter exchange about recording and documenting the online discussion and the event in general, Steffen convinced me of the importance of being able to opt-in to or out of the online discussion).

Could one opt out of a projected stream, though? I'm not certain that really would be possible. Perhaps some of my fellow tweeters might argue that's fine, that it just offers a different way of presenting what's taking place at the conference and eliminates the tenuous authority we place on anointed speakers. It would change the event's dynamic. I haven't been to an event with a live Twitter stream yet, so I'm speaking on conjecture, but I feel the conversation might get too disjointed and too distracted.

It was worrisome enough to me to see how caught up I got in the Twitter stream myself. What would happen if every participant was having fractured, interrupted conversations, if the speaker responded to every tweet, or some of them, or if she didn't respond to any? How would that affect the event's dynamic? I think it would become far more than a stream. And again, that's fine, but I think this is a point where we need to acknowledge that just because we have the ability to discuss and comment and report everything that happens, doesn't mean that we should.

Sometimes even if  we have tools available to us, tools that are incredibly useful in certain contexts, we don't always have to use them. I have a car. It's comfortable and it goes quite quickly from point A to B, even taking traffic into consideration. But I'm often much happier, much better served, by reaching my destination on foot, by bike, or via public transportation, specifically because each of those methods offers its own way to experience the journey. While I have the car (and no, not everyone has the luxury to choose), I don't have to use it every time I leave my house. Just because we have technology doesn't mean we must use it, and I think that point was missing from discussion at the event, and it's often missing from our discussion of the “future of journalism.”

During the event, Courtney Sherwood announced on twitter that she was “Not enough of a multitasker to keep up w/ #wmtm live tweets. I'd rather listen to speakers than read other folks' summaries and debates.”

I agreed in tweets here and here, in which I argued: “I think it's worthy to ask if we should examine this need to cover everything as quickly as possible,” and "Sometimes I think we need to stop and breathe, let the world happen, digest it, and report on it when we're ready, if we're ready.”

We really do need to breathe. I've expressed similar concerns over time in posts here, here, and here, at one point noting that

"As we fret and flail we risk forgetting about the words we’re stringing together, the information we’re reflecting upon and sharing, and the stories we’re telling. Whether breath on our lips, ink spread across a page, keys hammering into a ribbon or electrons running through a circuit, I’m concerned with how thoughts are captured, contained, altered and disseminated."

This perspective was even acknowledged by a tweet from Portland Phlush during our small network discussion, the same discussion that evolved into talk of an incubator (more on that very soon).

What's crucial, of course, is that Sherwood opted for herself to disconnect from Twitter, as I noticed many others did as they closed their laptops (for what it's worth, there were plenty of people on laptops not sitting in the “Twitter corner”).

T.A. Barnhart, decidedly not a journalist, may have said it even better than I could (friends from the Annenberg Specialized Journalism program will recognize this as a far more articulately-worded form of the “different colors of paper” argument I often made last year):

“In the end, my real work is no different than an opinion writer of a century ago: reading, thinking, writing, responding, and then more of the same. I get books from the library, bookstores — and Amazon. I read newspapers and magazines — online. I correspond with friends, politicals, colleagues, etc — via email, Twitter, websites and even by phone and in person. I write notes on paper, and I write notes on my laptop, which is not really functionally any different than typing up a few pages of notes and storing in a manilla folder. I use print-outs to proof longer drafts. And I publish online, although I have begun the process of creating an actual book."

Despite my reservations about the projection of a twitter stream, about the distraction they might cause, I know something else. These sorts of thoughts, these backchannels have existed in one form or another since as long as there have been conferences, really since as long as we've had the ability to communicate (see my article here about how scientists at USC are exploring the crucial role of backchannels in interpersonal communication).

Though i agree with Hyatt that the resistance to technology by some of the core organizers was disappointing, I differ with his claim that “technology is journalism.” I'm left wondering, “how so?” He mentions code and reporting tools and new ideas, but I don't see how at least the first two are anything more than tools. Yes, new technology does open up new opportunities, but those opportunities are absolutely dependent upon what one does with the technology, what stories one tells, what messages one delivers. New technology still requires vision, tenacity, creativity and curiosity.

False divisions

Unlike Hyatt, I don't agree that “the corner” had no outreach or communication with the rest of the groups offering proposals at the conference. One of the misconceptions about “the corner” that has now been widely challenged on other blogs was that we were participating in an us-vs-them mentality. I think the fact I delivered via Twitter and this very Web site my own statements above about resisting the need to constantly stream information suggests that technology can be used in many ways. Technology by its simple existence as technology does not necessarily alter what's told.

Anyhow, I grew to enjoy “the corner,” despite my dabbling with slow journalism, precisely because it was welcoming, inviting, and open to divergent perspectives and challenges. Though it didn't emerge from there, I don't think the idea of a content-neutral incubator that would serve as a physical and virtual space for journalists took off among this crowd because we saw it as a radical alternative to the other proposals. Instead, it succeeded because we perceive it as a space where journalists of all forms, in all mediums, with all opinions about where journalism should go and how it could be defined could find a place to work. It is by nature encompassing. Such a space would be what we make of it, not what it makes of us, and it would cater to the evolving, changing needs of independent freelancers (or, with a nod to Michelle Rafter, entrepreneurial journalists).

As Jen Willis — who participated in the same small group I did — put it

“Even in our break-out sessions — I was in one about smaller, online networking groups — the ideas and comments floated in Twitter were often better, more focused and more forward-thinking than what was happening 'verbally.'"

Indeed. We were so caught up with process and rules and confusion over what we were supposed to be doing in that room that those of us who had an idea of what should be done, or at least what we wanted to see, didn't wait for it to happen. We took to Twitter to begin developing our own future and to further articulate many of the ideas that would, eventually, form the basis for the incubator proposal.

There really has been a false dichotomy set up between an “old guard” and young technophiles in some of the responses to the event. Responding to (and defending) the event was Ron Buel, who, disappointingly perpetuated the idea that there were two camps at the event (Buel's commentary is also available on OurPDX):

"The Old White Guys who believe in traditional journalistic values – thinking, reporting, open-mindedness, ethics, that kind of old-fashioned thing – and technology-hip independent young journalists twittering away as the discussion ensued, even though it is they, not the Old White Guys, who will make the new reality of journalism happen in the digital age, or not.”

This statement saddened me. Before the conference I enjoyed engaging both Buel and Barry Johnson on the discussion papers they prepared. Though I was critical at times, I welcomed the effort they put into the event's preparation and wish more people had become involved in the pre-event discussion. Such involvement — which might have required better publicity and outreach before the event — might have prevented some of the aimlessness and confusion at the day's outset.

Nevertheless, Buel's statement highlights exactly the attitudes frustrating to many journalists and conference participants. Categorizing us as either protectors of “traditional journalistic values” or “technology-hip independent young journalists twittering away” illustrates the core misunderstanding of our own industry. We are not either/or. We weren't at the conference and we aren't in life. We are not either relics of the past or dreamers of the future. We are far more fluid than we have been cast, and I think Buel's doing so shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the very people he wanted to involve at this conference. Moreover, he takes far too many assumptions into his piece. Why does he continue to insist that we “are not worried about what will happen to our democracy?”

Again, the proposed incubator offers an example of just how concerned we are about democracy and the quality of our journalism. We are proposing a space where we can cultivate professional skills, nurture community, constantly improve and respect individual independence and diversity simultaneously.

Buel instead dismisses the incubator as a “neat” idea.  Actually, it's more than a neat idea. It's also not wholly unrelated to championing “traditional values” and it is not unworkable. What we are discussing is setting up a space to develop core strengths among journalists of all stripes. We have concrete plans for next steps, just as do the other two work groups Buel claims are filled with old folks (though I think each is more broadly supported than he characterizes, as the incubator is as well).

It wasn't just the old guard (to use a characterization I just rejected) who created this false dichotomy. Many of the tech savvy participants did as well, though I think there may be issues of muddled communication here (and perhaps with Buel and Steve Smith and others who were more resistant to the Twitter corner too). For example, Steve Woodward describes a “cultural gulf” in his discussion of the “futures – plural – of journalism.” I agree with Michael Andersen, who responded in Woodward's comments area, arguing that despite the overall quality of  Woodward's “we should all be cautious of the stiffening narrative that the Young Twittering Turks have some monolithic point of view as a group.”

Continuing the discussion

These sorts of discussions — not just the event itself, but the chatter in blogs reflecting on the event, and in their comments sections, and on impromptu listservs and in “the corner” — should be happening everywhere. They very well may be. As far as I can tell, they are not happening here in Los Angeles, despite the presence of countless, passionate, hungry journalistic minds. Sure, Annenberg hosts a number of speakers and events related to the future of journalism, and similar events take place across the city, especially thanks to the efforts of the Society of Professional Journalists' local chapter, the Los Angeles Press Club and other groups (JellyLA and, to a lesser extent, Blankspaces and WhereMMM are working to change the way professionals collaborate and work with one another).

Though I've certainly found passionate journalists here, I can't think of a consistent group, an energized core. Those events that do bring journalists together feel more like pits of desperate networking, reflecting an L.A. attitude I'd normally dismiss as mythology. I haven't felt a part of something more interested in promoting the community and the field of journalism than individual career fates perhaps since I was at Annenberg. Even there, those of us who cared had to fight against the passionless vapidity of marketing ourselves, of style over substance, of figuring out how to sell our product instead of cultivating the product we hoped to sell.

But I haven't found the core, creative passion that electrified the air at WMTM. Again, maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but I can't feel it happening. Instead, we watch grudge matches (Though insightful, well-argued grudge matches) debating what happened to the LA Weekly and fret about the seemingly perpetual implosion of the Los Angeles Times. Perhaps I'm just heartbroken I can't get a foothold in a city that means so, so much to me. Nevertheless, as much as I worry about L.A., I'm so excited about the possibilities in Portland.

Again, I turn to Jen Willis:

“We came together as professionals interested not only in creating content, but in helping to craft and guide how that content is delivered. I'd like to think we showed up because we're proactive and optimistic, and because we honestly give a damn about what's happening (and not happening) in the media today.”

Really, there are possibilities. It's silly that some people were disappointed that the conference didn't reach concrete conclusions. No one should have expected the event to save journalism in Portland or elsewhere, though that seems to have been the attitude of some (though certainly not all) of those critiquing the conference. In any event, something was accomplished. Though there was a tremendous amount of wasted time and frustrating breakdowns in communication, the energy that emerged behind the concept of a news incubator is encouraging. I'm disappointed I can't make it right back to Portland next week for the Digital Journalism Portland/SPJ social hour to be part of the first next steps in making it happen.

Other reflections on We Make the Media

For more nuts and bolts breakdowns of the conference, different perspectives on its implications, and other thoughts about the direction of journalism and the media in Portland, please read these other blogs, listed in no particular order (my apologies to those I've left out, but this is what I've seen so far). I highly recommend reading the comments on these posts too, as they are incredibly insightful. Oh, and please comment on this piece too!

• Still A Newspaperman » Blog Archive » “We Make the Media” in Portland

• Still A Newspaperman » Blog Archive » Seeking a better term than ‘hobby journalist.’

• WMTM followup: A Portland journalism incubator, and more | WordCount

• My views on WeMakeTheMedia event – after the hangover | Joe Wilson

• We Made The Media: What went right — and wrong | abrahamhyatt.com

• 360 Convos: Building a new model may require listening

• Steve Woodward: The futures — plural — of journalism | Nozzl Media, Inc.

• Will the touch tablet save professional journalism? « Mastering Multimedia

• Transcript for #wmtm - What the Hashtag?!

• The Next Journalist: We Make the Media

• What I think happened at #wmtm (We Make the Media conference) « ran dum thots

• civics21.org: on cities and citizenship in the 21st century

• We Make the Media « Reporting 1 Blog

• Update: 'We Make The Media,' but who's 'we?' | Oregon Media Central