Portland. Bikes and backpacks. Street cars and outdoor pianos. Where attendants pump your gas. Phenomenal house-roasted coffee and craft beer in enormous pint-sized beer bottles. A celebration of artistic independence, diversity and ‘weirdness’. Mount Hood in the distance, if you are lucky to catch it on a sunny day. And my personal favorite – a separate protected bike lane on the interstate.
Since I didn’t want to deal with city parking, I booked in to a downtown hotel (with parking) and did my exploring before I had to check out at 11am. A friendly, two mile walking tour. And I was in good company. This is a pedestrian-friendly city. Everyone looked fit and backpack representation was out in force.
The bike sculpture featured in the hit comedy series Portlandia is at 1234 SW Stark Street. Called the “Zoobomb Pile”, it celebrates the Zoobombers – bike enthusiasts who would weekly go up to the Oregon Zoo in the hills and bomb down back to the city as fast as they could. Sometime multiple times. Crazy enough, except they were doing it at night, in the dark, and on kids bikes. The 2009 steel sculpture, designed by Brian Borello and Vanessa Renwick, also serves as a bike park rack to store the bikes for their weekly adventure.
Burnside street is the main street of Portland, even more mainer than Main Street, 11 block to the south. All streets are marked north and south of Burnside, and all avenues are counted from the river. Funny, when I knew not very much about Portland and a lot about the pioneers on the Oregon Trail, I assumed Downtown Portland was on the mighty Columbia. Not so, the bridges in the inner city are over the Willamette River.
It’s always fun to find quirky buildings, and Al’s Den at the corner of Burnside and Stark reminded me of other triangular buildings like Badde Manors Cafe in Glebe, Sydney or the Flatiron Building in New York.
Al’s Den has a cool underground bar with live bands. It is named after Al Winter who ran his gambling operation – which, in the 1940s, stretched from the Pacific Northwest to Las Vegas – from this location.
One of the nicknames of Portland is “drip city”, a play on Bill Schonely’s moniker for the Portland Trail Blazers of “rip city”. Drip city not only applies to all the rain Portland gets, but also to their coffee. Yum. The coffee is exquisite. Strong. Bitter. Black. Everything it should be. I stopped in at the Zeus Cafe next door for some excellent coffee.
Continuing down Burnside on the left at 1005 W Burnside St is Powell’s books. Or I should say, Powell’s City of Books, since it takes up an entire city block. Powell’s is an Oregon institution, people from all over the US have told me that they go to Powell’s, buy a crate of books, and ship them home.
There’s a sign out the front about tolerance and acceptance.
Opposite Powell’s Books on Burnside is the interactive sculpture “Pod”, designed by Pete Beeman. Celebrating the energy of the City, the sculpture invites you to push the pod, and so, start the pendulum to swing. Clever design, when I was there three people were reaching and heaving and trying to swing it and laughing at the experience. I was laughing too. It’s really heavy… and high up!
So much great coffee, so little time. There’s a great pop up store on NW Couch called Dead Stop. And stop we did. For another coffee. I couldn’t resist the promise of coffee that “kicks and slaps”.
Obliquely opposite Dead Stop Coffee at 102 NW 4th Avenue is the Hung Far Low sign. Whilst the Chinese takeout is no longer in existence, the neon sign is still there. Hung low. In all its glory.
Really should soak up all that coffee with something, and what more iconic than Voodoo Doughnuts at 22 SW 3rd Ave. The funky store cleverly advertises its product with “the magic is in the hole”.
Voodoo Doughnuts offers clever ideas on a theme like Bacon maple donuts or the one shaped like a gingerbread man with a stake through his heart called the Voodoo Doll. But I couldn’t go passed the chocolate frosting, peanut butter and Oreo cookies one, called Old Dirty Bastard.
Portland is proud of its diversity and artistic freedom, and directly opposite Voodoo Doughnuts at 19 SW 3rd Ave is the “Keep Portland Weird” sign, again featured in the series Portlandia. It is a little underwhelming, since it’s in a parking lot and it is hard to get a decent pic with all the cars parked in front.
Portland never grew out of its neon phase. Vintage neon signs radiate all over the city. The neon signs of Portland are famous, and none more so than the White Stag sign at 31 NW Naito Parkway. Best position to photograph the sign (so that you can get the Old Town water tower sign close by in the same shot) is on the south side of the Burnside Bridge. But we were on the north side. Oops. I saw a number of photographers across the road, but was not about to cross a six lane highway to get a pic.
The 1872 Colonnade facing Ankeny Plaza is a reconstruction dating from when the north wing of the new market block was demolished in 1956. These remaining columns were salvaged and the colonnade was restored to its original condition.
From the Tom McCall Waterfront Park you can view a plethora of Bridges. A bevvy of bridges. From the box uplift of the Steel Bridge to Burnside and Morrison – both minimalist, double-leaf Bascule bridges, the majestic gables of Hawthorne, and even down to the dramatic two-level bridge with the Interstate 5 going westward on the bottom tier and eastward on the top. Couldn’t resist a little photographic study in bridges:
Down the Tom McCall Waterfront Park and an inordinate cluster of Canada geese, it brought back memories of Portlandia again.
There are some great little food stalls at SW 4th and Hall Streets. Presumably because Portland State University is right there.
Everywhere the street cars. Just like New Orleans. Or San Fran. They even ran through the University.
Next, to the Portland Art Museum, which is the oldest art gallery on the West Coast of the USA. I really enjoyed the collection of Native American art, and the gorgeous landscapes of the Pacific Northwest in the American Art Collection.
Directly opposite the museum is the Portland Historical Society, which had a wonderful exhibition called “Oregon, My Oregon”, showcasing lives of early explorers, trappers, and pioneers; it has a recreation of a ship’s hull from the Hudson Bay Company and even a genuine covered wagon that came over the Oregon Trail. It was quite informative, although I knew the state animal was the beaver, I hadn’t realized the state drink was … milk! There is an excellent interactive section for kids called the History Hub, and some great trompe l’oeil on the building’s facade.
The Portland Center of the Arts is housed at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall – advertised with another neon sign. Nicknamed “The Schnitz”, the building dates from the 1920s, and now houses several orchestras including the Oregon Symphony, as well as the White Bird Dance Company.
A couple of blocks further north, at 901 SW Salmon Street is the Southpark Seafood restaurant. Guess what the main dish was by the salmon protruding out of the brickwork. I went back later and found the Columbia River King Salmon with olives and pistachios was phenomenal. And I’m from a seafood country.
Back down to SW 6th Avenue, I found the Pioneer Courthouse Square, nicknamed “Portland’s Living Room” was being refurbished. The direction sign pointed to many interesting places, including Mecca and Timbuktu. Apparently it was a long way to Tipperary…
With my explore muscle thoroughly worn out and my legs shuddering on their coffee induced high, it was time to return to the hotel. Dodging the bikes and backpacks, street cars and cafes. It was refreshing to inhale the cool vibe, the hops and the caffeine.
Keep Portland Weird.
KIWISKITV 