journal entry 8.7.2024
Sidewalk Stamps
not to be confused with cement stamps

I was walking with one of my mentors, Kate Copeland,  after a trip to The Chinese Gardens. She spotted that Broadway was mispelled on the sidewalk stamp 
(also have you ever stopped to think about how Broadway isn’t an Ave. Blvd. or St. it’s just a broad way)



slight apologies, photos on this page were taken with my phone, above because my point n shoot broke, below because I didn’t feel like it was all the significant (at the time).

I had actually gotten slightly invested in sidewalk stamps after making maps of my sidewalk strip. There was a broken square whose missing corner meant I couldn’t read the whole word. I assumed it was an old street name that at some point was changed to a number, so I walked down the whole street trying to find the missing letters. Instead, I found a bunch of different stamps and realized it must be the company that poured the squares over 100 years ago. A tourist from Canada made a blog post about the plethora that portland has to offer. Here’s a post about about stamp hunting from the Pittsburgh Orbit, a spin off of the Portland Orbit, which I actually discovered from this reaserch rabbit hole, a full circle moment as the Orbit seems to be right up my alley and writing about plenty of similar things... I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes my primary source/I’ll just be linking to them.

Another fascinating find was a very small post from a pretty big company. This California corporation that provides different geography realted services, in this case they were advertising how sidewalk stamps were used for archaeology. They really didn’t have much to say, but I can’t get over the use of the word “archaeological” in the title. Makes me glad there are others applying what could be seen as liberal use of science terms... basically all of city ecology for me, and a lot of what I’m trying to do here.
Sandst(reet)? you can understand why I thought street name.
this one I took in 2019 when I was delivering packages for UPS. I like the moss filling it the indents of the stamp. (funny how indent is either a verb: to create a negative space, or a noun: the space left after indenting text, but that my use here marries the two in an amelia bedelia-esque kinf of way. 
oldest one I’ve noticed
            

I’d add more photos but there’s a lot better ones on the internet already (and specifically for portland); @sidewalkingpdx on instagram, this flickr group, or even a page in the wikimedia commons 

sometimes it’s nice to look down