West Coast
March-April 2008
| Day 1 San Diego |
Day 2 San Diego |
Day 3 San Francisco |
Day 4 San Francisco |
Day 5 Highway 1 Redwood |
Day 6 Highway 101 Portland |
Day 7 Portland |
Day 8 Portland |
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We returned the rental car in the morning and hooked up with CM, LK's significant other, at the nifty Portland train station. I
wish Atlanta had half the transit options and bike lanes
Portland has. You'd think in a town with miserable cold rain,
nobody would bike or walk but everyone does. Atlanta, with
sunshine most of the year, has lousy transit and nobody
walks anywhere. Speaking of, the weather turned on us, finally. Cold, rainy, windy - my least favorite. If it's going to be cold and wet it might as well snow, but it rarely does in Portland. Love the town, hate the weather. |
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| We got a late breakfast at Gravy, a delicious bacon, basil, cream cheese and tomato omelet for me, an interesting salmon hash brown thing for EM as well as a huge biscuit drowned in vegetarian gravy. CM got eggs and a massive country fried steak that looked so good I had to get a bite. It was pretty damn tasty. |
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We returned to
Powell's, the biggest book store I've ever been in. They mix
their used stuff in with the new so if you're looking for
something you might find it cheap.
Then we rambled all over Portland. It's not that big a town but it's packed with cool buildings, most of which have been repurposed, often into chain retail stores I have no interest in but it beats the mall. Sometimes they keep the facade of the old building and slip a new one in behind. |
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We headed across the river into the working class neighborhood
of St. John's Bridge to poke around. We tried almost every bar on the
few blocks of the village. A lot of bars in Portland give you a
free half beer if you order straight liquor. Why? I have no idea.
Some places you have to ask, and some places you don't get a
choice as to what beer it is, but if you want a cheap drunk it's
the way to go. This particular bar featured an internet jukebox - nothing unusual in this day and age. But we couldn't get over the weird obviously-pre-internet photo decorating the thing, complete with a jukebox in the background that plays records. Ah, post-modernism...
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| We hit the Salvation Army where EM put on some glasses that, combined with a coat she'd borrowed from LK, gave me a glimpse into the future... |
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We headed further down the block to St. John's Theater and Pub,
another McMenamins joint. From their web site, "Built in 1905 as the
National Cash Register Company's exhibit hall for Portland's Lewis and
Clark Exposition, this spectacular building was barged down the
Willamette River to its current location where subsequent incarnations
included Lutheran Church, American Legion Post, bingo parlor, and home
for Gypsy wakes. The ever-evolving dome was later reinvented as Duffy's
Irish Pub and finally, St. Johns Theater & Pub. Faithfully continuing in
its role as neighborhood pub and gathering spot, the ornate dome-topped
citadel shows recent releases of the silver screen, cult classics, and
art films for a reasonable $3 admission price. Of course, there are
plenty of McMenamins handcrafted ales, wines and spirits and food to
enjoy during the movie."
The domed roof was open inside to make a very
cool ceiling over the movie house. But most of us had seen Juno, so after a beer and plate of hummus we wandered on.
| Past the fencing school adorned with photos of Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickenson... |
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| to Slim's Bar and Grill, a place I can only assume was named ironically, as every patron in the place weighed at least 300 pounds. The food looked decent but we had passed a Mexican joint that looked interesting so we trekked across the street and had yet another round of tacos and burritos. |
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| The sign out front says, "Panaderia Taqueria Tienda Mexicana" - "Mexican Bakery Restaurant Store" - and they display some amazing cakes out front. Bakery racks were covered in donuts and pastry and they offered a variety of groceries for a Latino meal. But the real deal is their carnitas burrito from the little restaurant in back - holy shit, it's good. |
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We headed back to LK's neighborhood and had a nightcap at Crowbar, a nice place
but, like most of Portland, absolutely eaten up with hipsters.
Everywhere you look in Portland is a young face, often pretty
and well dressed by current standards, being cool. I can't blame them for flocking to the town. At some point someone used the phrase "hipster's paradise" and for the entire week I had Coolio's Gangsta Paradise in my head, except Weird Al kept butting in. I didn't know the lyrics to either version, but one of these days I'm going to make a spoof of them, with apologies to Coolio and thanks to Weird Al. As I roll around town on my fixed-gear bike If there is such a place, it's Portland. Record, book and comic stores everywhere you look, cool bars, bike paths, thrift stores, galleries, coffee shops, live music, brew pubs, cool old buildings taken over by American Apparel... But there's also a housing shortage caused, in part, by all the hipsters moving there. The weather sucks 90% of the time and how the hell can you be cool and hip when everyone is cool and hip?
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Gangsta's Paradise, by Coolio As I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death |
| Day 1 San Diego |
Day 2 San Diego |
Day 3 San Francisco |
Day 4 San Francisco |
Day 5 Highway 1 Redwood |
Day 6 Highway 101 Portland |
Day 7 Portland |
Day 8 Portland |
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