The PDX Bridge Festival is as a multi-venue, thematically cohesive arts festival. Using the bridges as a launch pad for stellar works of art and performance, our goal is to catapult Portland to prominence in the public art sector, demonstrating the power of creativity and community collaboration.
Selwood Bridge, Ross Island Bridge, Marquam Bridge, Hawthorn Bridge, Morrison Bridge, Burnside Bridge, Steel Bridge, Broadway Bridge, Freemont Bridge, St. Johns Bridge
The PDX Bridge Festival highlights the city’s bridges because the bridges connect the people of Portland! We would love to hear your very own bridge story. You can post a short story, poem, embed a youtube video or just post a url to your original bridge artwork. Please only include comments that emphasize your relationship to Portland’s bridges.
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I moved to Portland to raise my two daughters, July and Jasper! The sturdy bridges connect my family to friends and additional family. The importance to celebrate the bridges is like giving the city a needed foot rub! Sometimes neglected in our thoughts yet always present.
I am glad to participate on this festival as a Director of Media, and hope there will be created funding to produce a cinematic Portland film about its bridges and the people that use them!
I am thinking sourcing HD Video or RED Camera, edited with IMAX film technology of all the bridges, via sweeping the Willamette River, then project the film, (with your sponsorship name or corporation in the credits) for all to see during multiple celebration nights.
I think the bridges in Portland represents the strength of our common bonds. Even though this city has diverse political and cultural populations, tolerance allows us to celebrate our creative lives despite our differences. A Portland festival couldn’t have identified with a better metaphor. Celebrate your bridges, don’t burn ‘em!
I love the variety of bridges in Portland and how they represent the era in which they were built. I have been photographing the bridges at night and from different perspectives for nine months. Follow the link to my Web site and click on gallery to get to the night phots. Keep checking as I will add more soon.
I’m a eastside Portland native and grew up with a love of downtown and a love of bridge architecture, but some anxiety about crossing the bridges in a car or bus. While I was a student at PSU years ago I decided this would never do and made myself walk the Hawthorne Bridge a few times as a cure. The first time was terrifying and I will never forget looking through that grate at the water below while the wind and rain whipped around me. It worked though and now I can fully embrace my love of Portland’s bridges!
When I lived downtown for 3 years, I trained for half-marathons (for the first time in my life) by walking the 5K loop over the Steel Bridge, up the eastside of the riverwalk to the Hawthorne Bridge, crossover, and alongside the river on that side — as many times as it took on that particular day to meet my training needs. I love the river, I love the bridges, and I’m particularly fond of the Steel Bridge because of the option to walk so close to the water.
Born in Portland – I have crossed the Portland bridges more times then I can remember- My parents taught me their names like an adult points out the names of the birds or flowers between the houses and the streets to a child
Tho being in the elements on “the bridge” can be the beginning of many adventures- I want to touch (amidst another point) the sensation of riding as a passenger in a car over these notorious bridges -as a small child I grew respect of “the bridge” – maybe it started with my view of the world – one my height/eye location-second an imagination as wild as the universe- so together with limited view of the ground from a window seat in an automobile, even more limited if in the middle seat- Never being on any roller coaster/airplane/train/bird at that point,,it looked…felt as if I was going to skate right off the road into the Willamette- not that I do not trust my parents -maybe it is the rain- maybe the lack of the fenced in view that is so common for children- even to this day anytime I’m a passenger in a vehicle on a bridge or roadway over a water way, I have a strong desire to imagine that I’m flying off frankly its a lil fun at the same time a lil petrifying- I do not want to be like that lady and actually drive off the Morrison Bridge tho- Thinking about the strength in a bridges structure, the purpose of its connection- how every car and walkway,path on Portland bridges has life, beautiful life,,,the bridges are alive in Portland BUT The Willamette River is also alive(without man)that is why Portland even has bridges- We must remember the importance of the river and we must stop treating it like our toilet- If this event(s) is not going to help the Willamette River we have nothing to celebrate. onelove-jes
As a third grader, I remember drawing the Steel Bridge as part of our class assignment on Willamette River bridges. I still have the drawing. Over the years my appreciation for the infrastructure that brings our community together has only grown. As Multnomah County Chair, I see it as being an important part of my job to maintain these beautiful, unique structures so that future generations of third-graders can be inspired as I once was. These bridges are iconic – they say “Portland” more than any other structure or image.
my favorite PDX bridge-based tradition is breakfast on the bridges:
http://shift2bikes.org/wiki/bikefun:breakfast_on_the_bridges
each month, at least once but sometimes as many as 5 times in a month, a group of hardy volunteers rises before the sun (or perhaps at the same time as the sun, in june), brews coffee, bakes pastries, puts on weather-appropriate clothing and a smile and hangs out for 2 hours on the east shore of the steel pedestrian bridge and the west side of the westbound sidewalk of the hawthorne bridge, and feeds passing cyclists & pedestrians for a couple of hours. in recent years since i’ve started participating, we’ve upped the ante from coffee and donated pastries to baking contests, special holiday versions (i dressed up as the cutest male version of the virgin of guadalupe last month), and even occasional on-site cooking throwdowns: vegan versus carnivore biscuits and gravy made live while you watch, vegetarian versus vegan pancakes, a breakfast bar featuring over 20 toppings to go with some donated yogurt, and my favorite, “how much bacon can PDX cyclists eat in an hour?” (the answer was a bit disappointing–only about 1.25 pounds per hour…sustained for 4 hours though! this was perhaps rate limited by my cooking bandwidth…)
some portland-typical info tidbits about the tradition?
- the strange interplay between the city and the county and ODOT on bridge/street/highway “ownership”/responsibility means that we set up in somewhat of a grey (geographical) area and have never been harassed by any authorities despite carrying on this tradition for years. our closest brush has been with the navy’s MP during fleet week, who buzzed us in their police-boat a few times.
- we limit waste to a very small amount by using normal coffee cups (we bring hot water and soap to wash used cups as needed); brewing coffee and transporting it in reusable air pots; and we don’t provide napkins or utensils. eat neat, lick your fingers, or choose your breakfast items very carefully!
- we’re currently partially supported by local businesses large and small: black sheep bakery, voodoo doughnuts, trailhead coffee roasters (coffee delivered by, and occasionally brewed on, a bike!), and fred meyer among others.
- when you thank us for the free breakfast, we thank you for biking and politely refuse your donation. the time, food, and camaraderie are our donations to the PDX personally-powered community.
join us sometime! last friday of every month, 7-9am. every friday morning in june! you can find more info about joining the crew, and many pictures from many mornings at the website linked at the top of this comment.
In 2007, I returned from a job in Washington, D.C., and spent a few weeks in limbo volunteering for the Senate campaign of a fearless leader and now a close friend, Steve Novick.
Each morning, I’d ride my black fixed-gear bicycle from my parents’ house in Tualatin out to 99W to pick up the 94 express bus into downtown. From there, I’d grab my bike from the front of the bus and ride purposefully across the Hawthorne Bridge in the morning sunlight to Steve’s campaign headquarters to help in any way I could.
As the months wore on and I returned to school in Eugene, Steve’s campaign picked up a ferocious momentum and became one of the most inspiring political activities many of us had ever participated in. I remain close with many friends from that cycle, and I think of them and what we all stood for each and every time I pedal across the Hawthorne.
I remember the first time I got to drive by myself over the Fremont Bridge. It was a cool, fall sun setting on the sky and I remember seeing the arch coming up into view and two waving flags greeting me to the freedom of the road. To the chill air coming in from the sunroof and the backdrop of our humble skyline, I dreamed anything was possible.
The other memory I have is walking over the Hawthorne Bridge and being mesmerized by the grating that made the road. It was exhilarating to see the river below and foreboding. The sound of the cars going over it, a distant memory of coming of age in Portland — that this is what it meant to be from somewhere.
A handful of years ago I was on hiatus from graduate school, visiting an old friend who had recently moved to PDX. I was in the habit of escaping to this magical wet city whenever I could scrape together enough money for a plane tix.
I believe it was trip number three when we drove over the steel bridge in the darkest part of the night, just before dawn. Eyes closed, forehead pressed against the fogged up window of the back seat of my friends red station wagon whimsically painted with gold and silver wings. The tires hit a bump and my eyes shot open!
The city lay before me sparkling in lights that seemed to turn liquid in their reflection on the river. Gazing beyond the steel struts of the bridge I knew in the depths of my heart that I had found the home I had been searching for. As we reached the East side I closed my eyes again savoring the gift of knowing, finally, where I belonged.
It took me a year and a lot of sacrifice to get here, but I made it. Now, nearly four years later, every time I cross a bridge in the night I feel grateful for that bump in the road that brought me home to this city of bridges, water and light.
My grandmother was raised in St. John’s. I grew up with her telling me about how, when the St. John’s bridge was first built, she remembers walking across it holding her dad’s hand and looking down into Portland.
Every morning for the last 6 years, I’ve had the pleasure of driving over the Freemont bridge on my commute to work in NW from NE. No matter what time of year, it’s far and away one of the most scenic vantage points of Portland for anyone motoring across the Willamette. There’s something that sets my mind at ease in that minute or so that it takes to cross.
I moved to PDX from northern Minnesota last January. I was unemployed, had never been here, didn’t know anyone and officially on my own for the first time. The only solice that I found those first few bleak months was wandering into the downtown area from my SE apartment and walking the bridges. They were so beautiful and unique – just like Portland.
Now, a year later, I returned to the bridges during the recent snowstorm and was giddy with excitement to snap a few pictures of those bridges covered in snow. I wandered for hours; my toes and fingers were freezing and I was soaked from all of the snow that landed on me but I couldn’t have been happier. I wrote “Thank you for everything, Portland” in the snow on the Hawthorne bridge walkway and smiled the entire way home.
one the best part of riding my bike is going down the eastbank to the steel bridge once i get to the west side waterfront. the whole down town is at your fingertips. not to mention i am a photograper and some of my most prized shot are of the bridges in portland..
Wising Up On Water
I grew up in and about the Lents Neighborhood, which might as well have been Osaka or Sydney for the times we crossed the Willamette into downtown Portland, ten miles west of our gravelly driveway.
My mother suffered with agoraphobia–fear of going out, and my grandmother, gephyrophobia–fear of bridges, though none of us knew how to name our panics. These and my father’s and grandfather’s fears of “the bulls”—slang for police whether or not either of them were driving sober, coalesced to eliminate visits to OMSI, the zoo, or the Oregon Coast.
My best friend Irene moved to Corbett and we swam in the Sandy during the teenage years of our summers. After my parents permanently diverged, my mother dated men who fished the Clackamas. In the 1960s, Johnson Creek flooded our kitchen up to the cabinets. I married at seventeen and my husband and I moved to Minot, North Dakota, about as far away as you can get from the Rose City in terms of shade and water. Since I’d never been to Washington Park, I didn’t get the flowery nickname either.
I wrote The Portland Bridge Book in 1989; about the time I’d pulled my head out of the mud of my thirties. At the outset, I didn’t know the difference between a headwater and a headwaiter. Counting and scaling bridges, I began to locate myself–a single parent who wanted to be a writer. The bridges were my ticket to explore both banks of the Willamette.
I counted twelve highway-only bridges in the twenty-six miles between Kelley Point and Oregon City, plus two railroad bridges, and one burly black bridge built to carry trains and cars. In the midst of the tallying, I pushed up my cuffs and dug both hands into the Willamette, seeing if I could feel which direction was upriver and which was down. This was before I knew about the tidal influence that turns it back as far as Oregon City a couple of times a day.
Now, still directionally dysfunctional around the edges of my personality, I lead bridge and city tours for hundreds and hundreds of people every year. If we have a big enough bus, and the right kind of teacher in our schedule, I get to ride to Kelley Point with whole classes of third graders. We stand where the Columbia swallows the Willamette, kick sand, and admire current that will look up to the undercarriage of the Astoria Bridge before riding the Pacific to Asia or Australia. If no bus, we skip along the downtown Greenway between the Broadway and Steel bridges, where we’ve seen all sorts of things, including sea lions.
In my research, I’ve discovered that our river nearly died of pollution about the time I was born, in 1944, but we’ve both made it. No doubt getting better due to the awareness that comes with age.
I WILL never forget Walking WITH Gov. Barbara Roberts AND a unicycleing CLOWN across the NEW Twilligar BRIDGE Opening