Downtown, Springfield

What a novelty to walk just Jones. Course it’s just down to the bus station ATM and the dry cleaner to pick up my new thrift store cashmere. I feel as if I’ve lost 45 pounds.

Cat poop consumed: no

 

Downtown, Springfield

The extremely skeezy Club 420 (a supposed reference to its address, not its guiding principle) lost its liquor license two weeks ago and there seems to be a domino effect happening downtown. The stalwart guns & ammo store has “closed until further notice.” Lifetime Ink has relocated its needles and naugahyde lounge furniture further down to 14th, one assumes so they can be closer to the inspired patrons of the the strip clubs that cluster there. Dancers A La Carte (serving all of your dancewear and erotic housecleaning needs) is also closeing [sic]. But if you still have needs there is a number to call in the window. And the strip club that tried to open across from the arts magnet high school has finally removed the Opening Soon! sign. I doubt that my colorful burg will ever really gentrify, i.e., open a dog treats bakery, but is it possible that vice and dissipation may give way inexorably to day spas, Jazzercise, and soul food?

Cat poop consumed: no

 

Downtown, Springfield

It’s the Classic Cars Cruz! In downtown Springfield! Right down Main Street! With one dog apiece, L. and I threaded our way through the sidewalks packed with folks eating snack foods in folding chairs watching the parade of el caminos, camaros, and cadillacs. One VW bus and lots of cool old trucks. They were selling rootbeer floats in front of the day spa and the Hawaiian Elvis impersonator was performing in the parking lot of the Chinese restaurant. I had to stop a few times with Ramona to do outreach, i.e., letting kids pet her. We circled back down 10th and talked about how nice it is to see people! out on the street! in Springfield!

Cat poop consumed: no

 

Downtown, Springfield

If I told you that “Maca Baca” is a new business on Main Street, would you have any idea what you could expect to find there? Even if I tell you that it is a restaurant? With a cartoon moose on the sign? The banner on the wall promises “24 flavors of soft serve” so I figured it deserved a closer look. As I scanned the front windows for any insights into the content and spirit of the place (all-you-can-eat spaghetti feed on Tuesday nights, Sunday brunch buffet, posh coffee bar), a hopeful proprietor came to the door  and assured me “we’re open” which I could only assume meant dogs are also welcome. I already feel a protective affection for this place, given its misfit messaging. It seems well-intentioned but ultimately doomed, so I’m going to exploit the soft-serve opportunity while I can.

Cat poop consumed: no

 

Downtown, Springfield

When there is some kind of national or global crisis I look for signs of the reverberations here at home, but mostly nothing changes. There are always plenty of canned goods at the grocery store. Cars keep clogging the Parkway. In a place like Springfield, which already rides the ragged edge of economic viability even in good times, a scrappy hope seems to exist alongside the inevitable decline. For example, in the window of the new taqueria a neon OPEN glows above a FOR RENT sign. The pool hall is vacant but across the street the Jazzercise! studio thrives. And an actual newspaper just for Springfield will soon live in the former tobacco store.  I hope the two journalist visionaries take the advice of regional pundits, which recently gave the doglog a sort of shout-out (scroll down to #4: “There are likely people blogging in Springfield already.” Hello!), and incorporate our incisive and relevant insights. 

Jones likes to eat grapes.

Cat poop consumed: yes

 

Downtown, Cottage Grove

Choirs of Christmas angels illuminated with a thousand candles singing holy holy with banjos and banana bread. A flock of new lambs suckling mutton in alleyways. A rattling chain on a cement block stolen from a phantom Winnebago with Florida plates. Pink milkshakes drawn in chalk on the cracked sidewalk. A river of true sentences tumbling over themselves and piling up under the covered bridge. Slices of cheese left out in the rain. A trumpet calling all the children home.

None of these things happened on the walk today.

Cat poop consumed: no

 

Downtown, Cottage Grove

Ramona stopped to pee in the leaves on the sidewalk and I thought it might enflame a small-town scandal, as these things so often do. And as we passed the closed bakery there were B. and M. in an intense conversation, ditto. Not so much the youth draping a Main Street tree with xmas decorations outside the Cosmo Cafe. Jones was ready to stop when we passed L.’s old place, as if to say We’re here! There’s much love inside! Also Chubs! We kept moving, though, back through the historic district to River Road and the swing bridge. I kept feeling the ground bounce beneath me even after we crossed it. Scandals or not, I like a town so quiet after dark that one can walk down the middle of the street flanked by two dogs and fear no traffic.

Cat poop consumed: no

 

Downtown, Cottage Grove

I left L. to finish unpacking his kitchen for a spin around the new neighborhood. We’ve been through this part of town several times from the other direction, so I had to do some guessing to find the swing bridge across the Coast Fork of the Willamette River. Last winter we crossed it in a heavy snowfall, but today it’s a low fog, just as murky and magical. The bridge really is something out of Indiana Jones, and every time we cross it I have my emergency plan ready for when the cables snap and we plunge to the rushing water below. I keep hold of the leashes so the dogs aren’t swept away, unless we get tangled, then I Iet go and stay vigilant about where they land. Ramona will need the most help to swim, and I’ll have to keep her calm while we work together to reach the river bank. Jones will drift a bit downstream, but he’ll struggle his way out among the willows and blackberry. We’ll be cold but safe.

Cat poop consumed: no

 

Downtown, Springfield

I thought it might be time for another downtown cruise to see what the entrepreneurial spirit combined with economic downturn might be doing to Main Street. Evidence:

1. Christmas sparkles already up in the windows at AlethaLou’s.

2. The overpriced, underqualified taqueria will soon be replaced by another promising “taccos y pupusas.” I can’t wait!

3. Somebody was busy moving furniture into the lofty space above the yellow insurance office. He had the lights on and it looks like an art gallery up there, all airy beams and creamy walls. You heard it here first: Springfield is the new neighborhood for artists.

4. The new Jazzercise! studio was cranking with a full studio of gals being funky and getting fit. 

5. There is a new antique store, this one between the tattoo parlor and the all-purpose tienda, bringing us to a total of four within three blocks of each other. We’ll see how “Junk Monkey” stands up to the competition. 

6. The Legit Misfit, purveyor of smoking accessories and miscellaneous fishnet whatnot, has moved to the other side of the tracks in Eugene.

7. We’ll soon have a place to buy “fetish wear,” right next door to Dancers A La Carte, home of little bits of stretchy fabric and tall shoes for strippers.

 

Downtown, Springfield

Economic hope burns hot in the heart of downtown Springfield, where I was happy to see “Our Sewing Place”–the spot for communal crafting–up and going, a huge expansion of the arts magnetic school, and the strip club proudly claiming to be open for business soon, but not serving alcoholic beverages at the moment. Plus a new store for used baby stuff in the former jewelry store, and further down at 12th a new antiquey junk store next to the Gla-Mar Beauty Salon. El Trenecito was unexpectedly closed and I knew I couldn’t go home empty-handed, not with L. in full aesthetic imperative finishing the wainscoting in his underwear after brushing up against the freshly painted cabinets in the kitchen. I tied the dogs to a tree outside the taqueria at 5th to risk their carne asada burrito. Bullseye. Home improvement starts at home.

Cat poop consumed: yes