I'd heard it'd been closed once, and my thought was Was it -- wait for it! -- failing? Turned out there were other reasons for that. But I went on a long walk last night, getting off the bus at the Rose Quarter Transit Center and walking up Interstate Avenue to Mississippi Street, which is an increasingly noted shop-and-restaurant strip in North Portland. I'd wanted to read (
cmpriest's fun alt-history novel Dreadnought) somewhere other than home, and I wanted to see a place other than home. Noticing where Failing Street intersects with Mississippi, I thought why not? and headed west, towards the interstate. (I-5, I mean, not to be confused with Interstate Ave., the next big north-south road in that part of Portland and what used to be the way to get to Washington State, before there was an interstate. Confused yet?) And there, in the just-past-dusk dark, loomed a wall with a ramp along it and a stairway along another part of it. It exists! Or at least existed, but I haven't heard anything on the news that the Failing Pedestrian Bridge failed since then.(Whoa am I too easily amused.)
Anyway. I walked across it, then back across it, then up and down more of Mississippi. Then buses home, as it was dark and I was tired and there is such a thing as a long distance in Portland.
Oh and another thing. A little further east of Mississippi, Failing runs into Haight Street. Rick Emerson once said there needs to be a thrash metal band album called At The Corner Of Haight & Failing. This also amuses me.
