AMERICAN AIRLIENS FLIGHT STATUS

Icon PDX Waterproof Shell Jacket - Hi-Viz Yellow - Large - 2820-1637

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In downtown Portland, in front of the Standard Insurance Building, stands a well-known sculpture most locals refer to as "Family Night at the Y" or "Three Groins in a Fountain".

While both monikers describe the sculpture well, I don't think they're meant to be scornful. The sculpture is very peaceful and most people like it. Perhaps the nicknames arise from it showing a tableau one doesn't often see outside of marble or, say, a Ron Jeremy film.

I finally learned the statue's official name recently when I wandered up and read the small plaque near the south end.

Quest
Sculptor: Count Alexander von Svoboda - 1970

John Ashcroft would probably denounce Quest as a six breasted, two penis'ed abomination (and smother it under a special tax-payer-funded nipple-shrouding, breast resistant tarp) but we Portlanders proudly call it ours.

Hewn from white marble, the large sculpture prominently features two women kind of rearing up like horses or caught mid-dance, arms entwined, and a man kind of flying up beside one of them. (It looks like they all came out of a water slide at the same time or something — not really a pose people could "hold"). If you come up to the sculpture and walk around it you'll see there are two more people carved in it: a little boy standing and a woman resting.

The sculpture sits in the southern end of a long rectangular pool. The pool itself is about fifty feet long and fifteen feet wide and takes up about half of the space in front of the building. The two "rearing" women of the sculpture "face" south. The base of the sculpture is surrounded by small water jets, which provide a small amount of white water and a larger amount of white noise. There is also a small waterfall coming from the statue itself, falling noiselessly from between where the two women's hips meet. In the 60% of the fountain not taken up by the statue, two vertical jets shoot water about five feet into the air. Nine floodlights, submerged in the ten (or so) inches of water light the statue during the evening.

The fountain is surrounded by a lip about ten inches high and fourteen inches wide; almost perfect for sitting and, judging from the amount of cigarette butts littering the northwest corner, smoke breaks. Across Fifth street from Quest are Happy Bowl, a Radio Shack and a Carl's Jr. If you're in need of some bento, criss-cut fries, or a roll of overpriced solder, your salvation is just steps away.

Sitting by the fountain the sounds you hear are the white noise splashing of water and the muted rumble of Tri Met buses as they drive by (or the squeak of their brakes as they stop for passengers). Something so calming about the sound of water (unless you're in a sinking rowboat with a lump of pure sodium in your lap I suppose).

In search of yet more Quest information I ventured inside the Standard Insurance Building. Sitting behind the desk in the lobby was a nice woman named Evelyn and I asked her if she had any information on the statue out front. She grabbed a black notebook from beneath her huge desk*, removed the rubberband holding it closed and handed me a single Xeroxed page from within.

Here's what I learned.

First, Evelyn is totally on top of the whole statue inquiry thing. Seriously, hats off to Evelyn.

Second:

The sculptor Alexander von Svoboda was born in Vienna, Austria and now lives (at least he did at the time of the Xeroxed paper's writing) in Ontario, Canada.

Von Svoboda actually created two pieces of sculpture for the plaza of (what was then) the Georgia-Pacific Building. (I'm not sure what the second one is or if it still exists, I'll have to take another trip and walk around the building.)

According to the wizened guard who spelled Evelyn at 4pm, Georgia-Pacific moved out of the building a while ago ("They're off in... Tigard now I think"). The name of the building then changed to the Standard Insurance Building which we all know and love today.
Quest (or "The Quest" as the paper refers to it) was carved from a 190-ton block of "white pentelic marble". I figured "pentelic" must mean "you can't afford it" until I looked it up and found that it actually means

"Of or pertaining to Mount Pentelicus, near Athens, famous for its fine white marble quarries; obtained from Mount Pentelicus; as, the Pentelic marble of which the Parthenon is built."
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

Now just stop for a second and think: 190 tons. One hundred and ninety tons. That's 380,000 pounds. You ever help a friend move? You get pretty tired of carrying those damn boxes of hardback books up three flights of stairs, right? (especially since there's always that one guy that shows up late and only takes in stuff like throw cushions) Well sure, those boxes of books are heavy, but they ain't nothing compared to this block of marble. That's a spicy

FLIGHT INFORMATION

Flight: Alaska Airlines AS35
Equipment: Boeing 737-800
Departs: Boston (BOS) on Tue, Jun 9 at 4:45 pm
Arrives: Portland, OR (PDX) on Tue, Jun 9 at 8:10 pm
Class: T(Coach)
Seats: 26D

Flight: Horizon Air QX2019
Equipment: Bombardier Q400
Departs: Portland, OR (PDX) on Tue, Jun 9 at 8:55 pm
Arrives: Bend/Redmond (RDM) on Tue, Jun 9 at 9:35 pm
Class: T(Coach)
Seats: 13B

5-channel car amplifier
75 watts RMS x 4 + 300 watts RMS x 1 at 4 or 2 ohms
150 watts RMS x 2 + 300 watts RMS x 1 in bridged mode (4-ohm stable in bridged mode)
CEA-2006 compliant
Stackable installation design with front-panel controls
Variable high- and low-pass filters (30-400 Hz, 12 dB/octave)
Quick-connect speaker connectors
Class-D amplifier design
MOSFET power and output stages
Fuse rating: 30A x 2
4-gauge power and ground leads recommended wiring and hardware not included with amplifier
Dimensions: (WHD) 10-3/16 x 2-1/2 x 8-3/8 In.
warranty: 1 year