Downtown views

So, it's dark out there before 7am.  You may not have noticed that, since few people get up as early as I do.  Oh, I'm not complaining (much).  At least, not about your habit of sleeping later than me.  My point, and I do have one, is that it's hard to observe a lot of the changes that happen in our fair city when you can't see it because it's too dark.  Or too rainy.

However!  Traveling up the newly reformatted transit mall on the old Number 8, I can make out a few indistinct shapes in the gloom.  One thing I have seen and think is pretty cool is a coffee stand.  I can just hear you now ~ Wow! A coffee stand!  In Portland, of all places!  Ok, ok, quit with the sarcasm.  It's not that there is a coffee stand, it's the stand itself that caught my eye.

Do you remember those curvy, mushroom shaped bus shelters that spoke so eloquently of the '70's?

By the '90's, most were closed up and vandalized with just a few left functioning along the bus mall.  In the past decade they have almost all been replaced by the new variety of streamlined, hi-tech style bus shelters.

Well, along 5th Avenue, between Madison and Jefferson (I think) is one of the old bus shelters that has been converted to a coffee stand.  It looks quite cozy and cheerful!  The funny thing is, I think it was moved to this location expressly to be a coffee stand.  I don't think it was there before.  At any rate, I can't locate it on Google street view at its current location.  Interesting, no?  Yes, I thought so too.  This might need some further investigation!