Walk of the Town: Holiday Edition Award for Best underdog light display

Winners: Sibling dynamic duo Kirsten Stevens and Patrick O’Brien, at 800 W. 13th Street.

Photos and Story by Sarah Cook

The Dalles Ore., December 21, 2023 — Let me get something out of the way from the start: “underdog,” in my lexicon, is never a pejorative term. Yes, it’s associated with slim chances & tough odds, the latter of which are stacked against you.

But when I say that the warm, inviting display found at 800 W. 13th Street is my choice for the underdog of the year, I mean it triumphantly: it takes a ferocious amount of creative devotion, resilience, and ingenuity to decorate your yard full out when your neighbor is none other than the Cornerstone Church.

Like many residents, my partner and I make a point of walking or driving by Cornerstone at least once each holiday season. But something struck me a little differently this year: the lighted wreath strands along the banisters…the family of deer, gently bowing and lifting their heads…the lights on the outer and inner branches of that magnificent tree, creating an iridescent, almost x-ray vision: I found myself repeatedly drawn away from the church and toward its colorful, enticing neighbor just across the street.

With an equal mix of intuition and preference—I do love a good underdog story—I decided this house was the clear winner for the category, and I just had this feeling that there was a big, remarkable effort behind the cozy little corner.

As it turns out, I was right. While retired schoolteacher Kirsten Stevens is the permanent resident, it’s her brother, currently visiting from L.A., who is the driving force behind this year’s creative project.

“I live down in West Hollywood, and I normally do a huge display,” Patrick O’Brien told me by phone last week, a creative pursuit he’s been engaged in for more than 20 years. “Throughout the years, I collect things and give them to my sister. ‘I’m coming back one day to get there,’ I’ll say.” Besides retrieving his finds for personal use back home, Patrick loves to get his sister’s house in festive spirits when he’s in town.

He mentions that he ramped things up this year—no wonder I'd noticed—and when I ask to hear more about his West Hollywood decorations, he regales me with details about the elaborate displays he loves to create, both for Halloween and for Christmas. “You can see my house from two blocks away,” he shares, his home turning into a holiday beacon each year.

The longer we spoke, the more this whole underdog motif began to crumble: Patrick has years of practice under his belt when it comes to light displays and decorations; frankly, he’s the exact kind of person who could give Cornerstone a run for their merry money. “Could your house in West Hollywood compete with them?” I can’t help but ask, and he answers, kindly but assertively: “yes!”

When it comes to favorite pieces, Patrick is a huge fan of the antique stuff (“those are the fun ones!”) as well as the more robotic elements. Which makes sense, given his natural inclination to think about the mechanics of how these objects work.

“It’s all about problem-solving,” he notes. For one thing, the electricity at his permanent residence is kind of funky, his house having two breakers instead of one. “If the weather gets too hot”—which can happen during the winter in L.A.—“you have to turn the air on, but you can’t do that if you have the lights on, too.”

Fixing cords and replacing bulbs is also a regular occurrence, which means you’re devoting yourself to a lot of behind-the-scenes mechanical work when you take on this kind of seasonal project. “Each brand of lights has different types of bulbs, and different strands take different watts.” It requires skill attention to detail and, more than anything, patience.

Why commit to such an undertaking for something that gets dismantled after barely a month? At one point I hear Patrick—who’s been animated and effusive throughout the rest of our talk—searching for the right words. “I’m keeping myself…keeping my positivity up,” he explains, before zooming out to a communal focus and emphasizing that there’s something inside each of us—optimism? hope?—that we must tend to, now more than ever. His words say a lot without needing to say much. I couldn’t agree with him more.

Another one of Patrick’s favorite elements is the icicle strands that look like teardrops, which line the streets of West Hollywood and make it feel like you’re “going through candy cane lane.” I think for a moment about how mundane this stuff can be: hanging lights, blowing up inflatables. Little pieces of glass or tinsel or plastic, some that blink and some that glow. Simple, ordinary things.

And yet. These experiences we get to have—like feeling, for the briefest moment, as if you’re walking through a fantastical and delicious world, a children’s board game brought to life: there’s not a single person who doesn’t benefit from the chance to feel such feelings, however fleeting they may be.

Patrick and his sister, Kirsten, get to not only have these experiences but observe them regularly in others. They watch as cars full of eager onlookers pull up to Cornerstone, park, turn on their radios, and take in the church’s awesome display. People will sometimes sit and watch for an hour or more, Patrick tells me, and as I’m listening it becomes clear—energetically? intuitively? emotionally?—that it isn’t just a religious thing, at least not only. It’s also an everybody thing: families looking to surprise their children, teens letting some cheer sneak past their moody, protective walls; folks looking for a spiritual boost, a Christian boost, or a boost of color. Or people who are simply curious and easily filled with gratitude—people like me?—and who know, on some level, that curiosity and gratitude are enough.