Q&A: WHERE’D WE BURY THE BONES?

In response to my story yesterday about Bullseye’s beginnings, I got this email from Linda Steider:

“I used to bring my students from the gorge to tour the factory & especially loved it when our tour guide would point out the old beam that was left in place from when the factory was being built around the houses without tearing them down first. Is the beam still there?”

Linda’s question sent me back to the archives for this tour of THE YEAR WE BUILT THE NEW FACTORY OVER THE OLD ONE.

The first Bullseye “factory” was a little frame house in a Southeast Portland neighborhood called Garlic Gulch. As the company grew - and the neighbors evacuated, the guys would buy the house next door, until they owned 5 or 6 shacks cobbled together with corrugated metal and duct tape.

By the early ’90s the divorce was final, the finances were improving, and it looked like time to start tidying up.

Supposedly “Garlic Gulch” was a sweet little Italian neighborhood just south of central Portland in the 1940s. By the time I first saw it in the early ’80s the well-tended gardens were gone and the Bullseye gang had put the aging houses to work. By the early ’90s, the neighborhood was looking pretty seedy.

Production didn’t stop for a day as the walls went up.

Once the roof went on, the houses would all be broken apart and - literally - thrown out the windows. And as a bunch of little ceilings were replaced by one big one, the casters just kept rolling sheets.

“Is the beam still there?”

Linda, yes there’s a beam and some cinderblocks still behind that glam exterior (thank you, Ankrom Moisan Architects).

To those of you who asked to see some “pictures taken after 2 PM” and to hear the “hooker stories”, keep dreaming!