It occurred to me as my family is preparing to move into a new home that I've never really taken the time to explore my neighborhood in the last 9 months. Of course, I've seen what I drive by every day to enter/exit my neighborhood, but I've never gone beyond our house. So I did, making sure to take no road I'd ever been down before. Rather than take pictures of my neighborhood and the sidewalks (which you could just view on Google Street View if you really wanted to), I decided to take pictures of the different mailboxes I passed along the way. Oddly enough, this sorry-excuse-for-a-rule actually turned out to accurately document the different types of homes I passed along my route!
RULES:
So I began my journey in what I've been told is "Yuppy-ville" filled with nothing but the nicest cars and huge, brand new townhomes inhabited by 20- and 30-somethings who wear snazzy clothes. (No judgment here :] I only moved to PDX to get away from that!) Unfortunately, this part of the neighborhood shares mass-mailboxes to make things easier on the mailperson; this doesn't, however, help my project! Everything is very cookie-cutter-esque, the architecture all very stiff and angular; the landscaping is exquisitely perfect (anything is compared to the 'landscaping' in Kansas City).
As I moved north, I began making my way into the houses which originally made up the neighborhood; houses from the 60s and 70s. I pass a few people taking walks with their pets or husbands/wives, and begin to notice how different the architecture is here: houses are actually unique, some of them with great breezeways with huge windows for creepy art students to peer into while passing by. The trees in this area are much older and thicker, the shade very protective and comforting; the ground between the sidewalk and the street is covered in ivy. One house has a small, handmade, two-dimensional horse cut out of wood in the front yard; another house has a stolen STOP sign on its fence ... The mailboxes in this area differ greatly between some of the nicer homes (as evident by their perfectly-laid brick mailboxes) and the middle-class family homes, which have 'pleasant' and creative mailboxes -- one resembles a spaceship with its synthetic, white, sharp edges; one sits atop wooden poles coming out of the ground, bound by rope, as if they'd just been taken from the Swiss Family Robinson movie.
Moving on to the east and southeast ends of my route, the houses move slightly lower on the income scale, but no where near trashy. The road is paved but there are no curbs. The landscaping in the yards here is clearly less attended to, but not running wild. The cars are no longer BMWs but Fords. The mailboxes are stereotypical, not creative, and they sit mostly atop slender poles, sometimes leaning over, sometimes surrounded by garbage cans, sometimes kept company by bright orange construction cones. The monotony is broken up by a rogue mailbox covered in painted flames to match the hotrod in the driveway that I've seen drive past my house so many times. Beyond this mailbox are sets of mailboxes, which I assume are huddled together to cut down the stops for the mailperson -- somehow, this almost creates a sense of community and comaradery amongst those who must live in those homes nearby. Or maybe I'm just overanalyzing mailboxes ...
Headed back west past Merritt Orchard Park is nothing but a family townhome complex even more cookie-cutter-esque than the first one I passed, these all being the exact same shade of brown. Alas, no individual mailboxes here either.
In retrospect, I regret not having explored my neighborhood more before having to move. The cookie-cutter townhomes and surburbanites remind me a lot of my hometown, which is comforting, despite how ready I was to leave. The older homes and lush green growth in the area and Merritt Orchard Park are prime examples of what drew me to the Northwest in the first place. The bitter-sweet realization I had is that I almost felt at home in this place. And now I must start anew!
C'est la vie! :]
Here are all of the mailboxes, in no specific order.
Click for a larger view
 |
| From Summer Session |
- Take only streets with which you are unfamiliar as often as possible
- Photograph an object that each house has which may, in some way, reflect the types of houses and neighborhood in which you're walking
So I began my journey in what I've been told is "Yuppy-ville" filled with nothing but the nicest cars and huge, brand new townhomes inhabited by 20- and 30-somethings who wear snazzy clothes. (No judgment here :] I only moved to PDX to get away from that!) Unfortunately, this part of the neighborhood shares mass-mailboxes to make things easier on the mailperson; this doesn't, however, help my project! Everything is very cookie-cutter-esque, the architecture all very stiff and angular; the landscaping is exquisitely perfect (anything is compared to the 'landscaping' in Kansas City).
As I moved north, I began making my way into the houses which originally made up the neighborhood; houses from the 60s and 70s. I pass a few people taking walks with their pets or husbands/wives, and begin to notice how different the architecture is here: houses are actually unique, some of them with great breezeways with huge windows for creepy art students to peer into while passing by. The trees in this area are much older and thicker, the shade very protective and comforting; the ground between the sidewalk and the street is covered in ivy. One house has a small, handmade, two-dimensional horse cut out of wood in the front yard; another house has a stolen STOP sign on its fence ... The mailboxes in this area differ greatly between some of the nicer homes (as evident by their perfectly-laid brick mailboxes) and the middle-class family homes, which have 'pleasant' and creative mailboxes -- one resembles a spaceship with its synthetic, white, sharp edges; one sits atop wooden poles coming out of the ground, bound by rope, as if they'd just been taken from the Swiss Family Robinson movie.
Moving on to the east and southeast ends of my route, the houses move slightly lower on the income scale, but no where near trashy. The road is paved but there are no curbs. The landscaping in the yards here is clearly less attended to, but not running wild. The cars are no longer BMWs but Fords. The mailboxes are stereotypical, not creative, and they sit mostly atop slender poles, sometimes leaning over, sometimes surrounded by garbage cans, sometimes kept company by bright orange construction cones. The monotony is broken up by a rogue mailbox covered in painted flames to match the hotrod in the driveway that I've seen drive past my house so many times. Beyond this mailbox are sets of mailboxes, which I assume are huddled together to cut down the stops for the mailperson -- somehow, this almost creates a sense of community and comaradery amongst those who must live in those homes nearby. Or maybe I'm just overanalyzing mailboxes ...
Headed back west past Merritt Orchard Park is nothing but a family townhome complex even more cookie-cutter-esque than the first one I passed, these all being the exact same shade of brown. Alas, no individual mailboxes here either.
In retrospect, I regret not having explored my neighborhood more before having to move. The cookie-cutter townhomes and surburbanites remind me a lot of my hometown, which is comforting, despite how ready I was to leave. The older homes and lush green growth in the area and Merritt Orchard Park are prime examples of what drew me to the Northwest in the first place. The bitter-sweet realization I had is that I almost felt at home in this place. And now I must start anew!
C'est la vie! :]
Here are all of the mailboxes, in no specific order.
Click for a larger view
 |
| From Summer Session |
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