I don’t have much to post, except that I’ve started job-hunting. Wish me luck… I’ll need it…
In other news: Did you know that there’s a vast, labyrinthine maze of tunnels, buildings, caverns, and artificial courtyards lying underground, beneath the city of Portland?
Well, I discovered this in my sleep a couple nights ago. I think it’s the result of thinking about the real tours of underground Portland and Seattle, combined with just finishing the book The Time Machine.
Underground Portland is pretty spread-out, and there are secret access points throughout the above-ground city. Near the end of the dream I was taken to “the apple tree,” which looked more like an evergreen, and it was planted in the middle of someone’s driveway. But sure enough, by lifting a grate we found the soil to be choked with stray apples, and as we dug into them my companion told me to be on the lookout for a shiny black detonator, which we would use to explode the apples somehow and clear the passage. Unfortunately I’d already picked up such a device, broke it into pieces, and tossed it back into the apple pit, so oh well.
Aside from that, I saw some subterranian concrete labs which had been converted into comfy sleeping spaces, and learned that there are all kinds of great reasons to get into the ‘underground Portland scene’ — there’s treasure to be found, maps to be charted, adversaries to be fought… Unfortunately, it’s a really exclusive venture. At its worst, you have to make yourself known in the underground for >years< before you'll be trusted with the best secrets, certain special locations and access points where the >good< stuff happens… I can only imagine what it is.
There really is a Portland underground, although it’s nothing like that in Seattle. Called the Shanghai Tunnel, it used to be (maybe still is) open for tours from the Mallory Hotel. Back when Portland was Stumptown, sailing ship captains supplemented their crew rosters with unfortunates who were mugged and hauled off through the tunnel.
The lowest recorded point in Manhattan, as I’ve heard it told, lies 85 levels beneath the surface.
Apparantly, it’s the same under the Denver Airport.http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Denver_Airport.html
Ah yes, nothing better than conspiracy theorists!
That reminds me of my history classes, where we discussed that in the excavations of Troy, they discovered at least 7 distinct layers (identifiable through pottery styles, etc). One of them was called the Garbage People layer because they appearently never threw anything away, just dropped it on the floor of their houses, until eventually the whole city had to be raised a level.
There is actually a bar called the Shanghai Tunnel that is downtown by Berbati’s Pan that was formerly an entrance to the tunnels..its a fun bar but it gets really crowded downstairs..we should go sometime.