Savor Portland's weirdness
BY BETSA MARSH | ENQUIRER CONTRIBUTOR
Like a glacial breeze off Oregon's Mount Hood, Portland blows away the cobwebs of same-old travel.
Instead of dutifully slogging through museums, how about pulling up a chair at a sidewalk cafe, sipping chai or a microbrew, and asking your server where he would go? Or rent a bike and see how many neighborhoods you could breeze through before happy hour. And what's not to love about a city that embraces not one but two happy hours - about 5-7 each evening, then a second-wind version about 10 p.m.-midnight.
'THINK DIFFERENT'
And why not? It's one of the key questions of the Portland mind-set, along with its twin, "What if?" Some Portlanders chant the city mantra "Think Different," while others echo "Keep Portland Weird." Weirdness is so institutionalized now that the Travel Portland association hands outs "Keep Portland Weird" bumper stickers. Codified weirdness - can an entire city be an oxymoron?
Stand too close to a Portlander and you can almost hear the cogs clicking. What if we redesigned a city around people rather than cars? We'd need some buses, light rail, streetcars, an aerial tram and flex cars, communal vehicles we can rent for a few hours or days. And oh, yeah, let's rip up the four-lane freeway along the Willamette (wil-LAM-et) River and make it a park.
For travelers, that means a fabulous Fareless Square, a 330-block area where it's easy to hop on MAX light rail, shiny new streetcars, a trolley or a bus for a free ride to most of the city's shops, restaurants, museums and hotels. And don't miss the new aerial tram for a great view of the Willamette River and the burgeoning South Waterfront District.
The former freeway is now the mile-long Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park, a jogging, skating, biking and walking path lined with cherry trees and grass. Portlanders are out on this tenacious little strip in all weather, determined to take back their river.
What if, they ask, we revived our old buildings so that the 1891 Historic Portland Armory becomes the new home to the Portland Center Stage? It's the first building in America to combine status on the National Register of Historic Places with a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum rating. It's now Victorian and virtuous.
What if the 1915 Kennedy Elementary School, set to be bulldozed, instead becomes an entertainment complex? It just took a bit of whimsy to move brewery vats into the old "little girls" room, a restaurant into the school cafeteria, bed-and-breakfast rooms into the old classrooms, and tiny Honors and Detention Bars in the old janitor's closets.
CITY'S PLAYFULNESS
There's always the playful side of nearly any Portland decision. What if we tethered toy horses to the old hitching rings in the sidewalk?
What if we sold Voodoo doughnuts all night long through a speak-easy window? What if I turned my old Elvis album covers into purses? Grandma's old tea towers into dresses? Hey, let's open a shop.
To savor the weirdness, it's best to just strike out into Portland's quirky neighborhoods, wandering in and out of shops, bakeries and bistros, and see what strikes you back.
Or bike it in one of the world's great cycling cities. Five thousand Portlanders pedal to work every day, so the bike lanes are sacrosanct. As is the lane for skateboarders and inline skaters.
Portland has spent decades and billions going green and invites travelers to see how it works. Visit Forest Park, the nation's largest urban wilderness at 5,000 acres. But don't forget the world's smallest dedicated park, the beloved Mill Ends Park in a freeway median - all 24 inches of it.
Yin-yang tension is palpable in this Pacific Rim city of 600,000, whose Asian populations give it great Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese restaurants and shops. The Japanese and Chinese cultures have inspired two of the most authentic paradises outside their national borders: the Japanese Garden in Washington Park and the Classical Chinese Garden in the urban heart of Old Town/Chinatown.
The Japanese Garden is all serenity, raked gravel, stone lanterns and delicate bowed bridges. The Chinese garden, set in the Ming Dynasty of 1368-1644, is redolent of mock orange and lemony michelia, magnolia's cousin. The gardens were crafted by Japanese and Chinese experts, the rocks for the Chinese garden arriving in giant bags from Portland's sister city, Suzhou. When Portland's weirdness becomes too much, these are the city's great escapes.
Revived, it's back into the fray, district by district. Many travelers head first for the Pearl, an old industrial area that now gleams with converted lofts, boutiques and nooks for drinking, dining and shopping.
Powell's City of Books, the world's largest independent bookseller, anchors the Pearl. With shelves stretching over a square block, Powell's is the place to roam for hours, dipping into the metaphysics room, maybe, then checking out the wall of Japanese manga books. Undecided? Take up to five volumes into the coffee shop and read away.
Don't miss the Rare Book Room on the fourth floor, a sequestered spot with 14th-century folios and Al Gore first editions. Take the lift down - it's the world's only three-door elevator.
In the Pearl, the Real Mother Goose offers refined American crafts, and Verdun serves exquisite chocolates. Nurvei bakes some of the city's crispiest croissants, and Andina brings such Peruvian specialties as "jumping meat" (lomito saltado) to Portland.
BARELY ENOUGH HOURS
On the edge of the Pearl, Masu rolls some of the town's most inventive sushi. It's often paired with saketinis made with rice wine from Portland's own SakeOne, the only American-owned sakery in the U.S.
Portland's a drinking town, whether it's a Sunburnt Kiwi bubble tea at the TeaZone, a latte at the St. Honore Boulangerie, an Old Schoolhouse Pale at McMenamin's Kennedy School microbrewery or a glass of wine from any of the hundreds of Oregon wineries. In another fit of independence, Portlanders love to blend their own carafes at the Urban Wineworks, set in an old warehouse.
There's so much to do in this city of dual happy hours that it's easy to stay up most of the night, fueled by hard-core Stumptown coffee and Voodoo Doughnuts' best-seller, the Bacon Maple Bar.
The circumstances are totally different, of course, but Elizabeth Wood, a pioneer on the Oregon Trail in 1851, summed up the whirlwind of a modern Portland trip.
"A lazy person," she wrote, "should never think of going to Oregon."
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