Rosie and The Operator are staying four nights in Portland, the Capitol City of the State of Oregon whose interesting moniker is, Keep it Weird! It is home to 650,000 Portlanders and sits on the banks of the Williamette and Columbia rivers. It is a city of red brick, oxide steel, silos, bridges, intertwining highways and, at this time of the year, in November, covered in yellow and orange autumn leaves. The beautiful harvest pallet shimmers under a blue sky one minute and looks flat and damp when the fog rolls in and the skies turn grey all in the next breath.
The streets of Portland are lined with shedding leaves. Drifts sit in the street side gutters, on rooftops and blanket lawns. The autumnal colour blends perfectly with the brick and steel and gives the city a feel of one last festive show before winter kicks in turning the city grim, grey and drizzly.
Arriving in Portland Rosie and The Operator wanted to get the feel of the place and see from up high how the city looked and how the land lay so our first port of call was to visit the Aerial Tram. Its only a short gondola ride from river level straight up the hillside to the Marquam Hill area of town.
Rosie and The Operator had to laugh and were abit surprised to see waiting in the line for the next available gondola quite a lot of hospital workers in full seemingly surgical scrubs. True! We are talking full tops and bottoms, and they were actually wearing surgical face masks and scrub caps…all waiting in line to ride the gondola like a bizarre fancy dress.
It turns out this gondola was not built as a full on tourist attraction but actually as a commuter way of accessing two hospital buildings, one at the bottom of the hill and one at the top. The fact there was a good view over the city and a lovely huge balcony to view it from before you entered the hospital, is a bonus to the tourists.
The view up the river was fab and the bridges that span this river are crazy numerous as is the twisting, turning sinuous road interchange that leads in and out and around the city. In the distance, hazy on the horizon is the lump of Mt Hood.
Portland, was established in the 1830s and its primary industry was based on milling and logging. The cities early reputation is one of a hard edged, gritty port town, with open festering sewers and was once described, because of its distance from anywhere ‘civilized’ as being the ‘end of the earth home for the exiled spawn of the Northern States Genteel’.
The city also housed a large number of saloons, bordellos and gambling dens which were popular with the sailors and miners that traveled up here after the California Gold Rush. A series of underground tunnels lead from these early bordellos and saloons to the port and it was common practice for sea captains to kidnap drunken patrons in the above establishments, take them through the cellars into these tunnels, hold them captive on their boats and make them man their ships enroute to China…hence the term ‘shanghaied’ was born.
Nowadays Portland is recognised as one of the most environmentally conscious cities in the world. Based on its easy walkability, huge community of cyclists and cycle ways, excellent public transport network, farm to table dining, recycling and re-usability initiatives and over 10,000 acres of public parks. As a result, Portland consistently ranks highly as the city with the best quality of life and most livable in the USA.
Its main industries are still steel and logging but it is also home to many US Head Offices and manufacturing plants including Intel, the largest employer in the city with a payroll of 15,000 people making, packaging and shipping computer components. Portland also has the second highest number of tech start ups in the US after Silicon Valley which tongue in cheek has been dubbed Silicon Forest, after the city’s huge green spaces and initiatives.
So saying, Portland is a city full of free thinkers and the social eccentricities it fosters also adds to the reputation the city has of being ‘weird’. KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD is a moniker that makes the city super proud and also one the city embraces and totally lives up to. Rosie and The Operator were regularly in either fits of laughter, incredulity, bemusement and sometimes outright shock at the ‘weirdness’ we DID encounter within the city.
As well as being the capitol of weird Rosie feels the town also needs to equally share the badge of KEEPING PORTLAND RETRO. The squat, square brick buildings of Old Town all house beautiful old school neon signage from their flat faceless frontages. These signs make them stand out from the row of similar buildings that surround them hinting at something exotic and interesting with in.
Something interesting like an old retro pinball arcade maybe? There are so many of them in this town, alongside Dungeon and Dragon Gaming Rooms and every pub in town has a wall of board games for the patrons to use at any time.
But it was those dark dens of bright plashing lights, pings, bangs and short bursts of overload music that drew Rosie and The Operator through the doorway. It was awesome wandering around checking out the games of old we remembered and having a few goes. Yes, these dim dark rooms sure devoured time just like they did in the old days as you come out into the daylight, blinking like a mole emerging from its hole into the daylight.
Walking under the Dragon Gate of Chinatown you morph into the streets of Old Town which are littered with small tents during the early morning, these tents are shelters which house the multitude of homeless overnight. Rosie cant blame them for pitching a tent, this town is renowned for its dismal wet weather and rains on average up to 200 days of the year. They literally are pitched in any available green space, under bridges, and even more bizarrely, in some cases, blocking the entire footpath. By mid morning these colourful cocoons are packed up into shopping trolleys and the owners wander the streets or lie in any available patch of sunshine.
The heart of Downtown is Pioneer Square where the oldest courthouse in the Pacific North West, built in 1869, sits at one end looking very grand across the red bricked town square.
Look closer at the bricks and you will see that they are all monogrammed with the name of the resident that sponsored that particular brick….all 80,000 of them. A signpost outside the courthouse points to other parts of the world and Umbrella Man stands in the square, a fitting tribute to this soggy part of the world. Mind you, Portlanders say they can always pick a tourist, they are the ones carrying an umbrella, real Portlanders never use one! Its true, they all opt for the grungy raincoat look.
Of course there is a little of the weird here in this square…the floral telephone box of course…every city should have one.
Rosie and The Operator wandered the perfect, straight, grid like streets of Old Downtown to find Powells City of Books, which has been an institution in the city since 1971.
It wasn’t hard to find as it takes up a whole city block. This temple of literature claims to be the biggest purveyors of new and used books…in the world! The shop truly is incredible, it houses over one million titles and has over 3,500 sections. It is a literal rabbit warren of tall shelves and that all accompanying beautiful book smell just wraps around you and makes you want to stay and browse.
Around the corner from Powells Bookstore is the World Famous in Portland, Voodoo Donuts. Portland is obsessed with donuts and you are guaranteed to find a doughnut store in this city nearly every 100 meters. Seeing the neon Voodoo Doll lit up against the grey sky in front of the store filled Rosie with promise of a tasty offering.
There was a queue, and, apparently there always is but it was moving quick and there was plenty to take in whilst in the line. One of the Voodoo monikers is ‘They are worth the weight’, Rosie sure hopes so!
Watching from the line a man was wandering flying his micro kite, it was exactly as advertised and certainly fitted into the weird Portland category.
A giant menu was on the wall outside the store and Rosie had her selection sorted before she set foot inside….when she did get to the front of the line…oh my word. Head banging heavy metal was booming through the store speakers at decibels way way way too loud for Rosie’s aging ears. The tattooed, pierced and dangly earlobed youths behind the counters were literally head banging to the bass and fair pumping the people through to the tempo. Apparently staff take turns at controlling the stereo for an hour each during the day…okay…
This donut shop is open 24/7 and unofficially reported to sell up to 15,000 donuts per day! Holding my pink box, full of delicious delights Rosie couldn’t wait to tuck into them.
Rosies selections included a Portland Creme (the official donut of Portland as dubbed by the Mayor himself) and a Voodoo Doll. The Operator had chosen the popular Homer (aka the donut of Homer Simpson himself) complete with pink glaze and sprinkles plus a Raspberry Romeo. OMG, they were so divine, delicious and fresh. The crème and jam fillings were just so generous and tasty it was a real swoon fest alright. Rosie is not going to admit how many times she has been back to Voodoo whilst she has been in Portland….but that marketing moniker above is totally true.
Voodoos arch rival in Portland and preferred Doughnut outlet of the locals is Blue Star. They are a more sophisticated and grown up shop with more traditional flavors and no queues. When we visited to sample, in a true research capacity of course, entirely for an impartial comparison on this blog, (the things Rosie does for you, dear reader) most of the flavors were sold out and the choice was pretty limited and not quite as fresh. In conclusion, Blue Star is OK….but Rosie is definitely Team Voodoo.
Ok, those donuts are a minimum of 300 calories each and Rosie has eaten her fair share of them, time to go for a walk around the number one attraction in Portland on TripAdvisor, The Portland Japanese Gardens. Rosie was a little skeptical about visiting the garden…but it has to be the number one tourist attraction for a reason right?
The Japanese Gardens were designed and built in 1963 to honor Portland’s Japanese sister city of Sapporo in Japan. The park sits nestled high up in the West Hills of Washington Park looking down over the city and these gardens are deemed to be the most authentic Japanese style garden outside of Japan. Walking the short distance to the top of the hill the afternoon sun was streaming through the trees turning the autumn leaves bright yellow and quite translucent.
It was a truly lovely walk, which wound around groomed paths flanked with mossy ground and perfectly manicured bushes. Art galleries and exhibitions were housed in the traditional Japanese buildings and the front deck looked out over a beautiful white stone zen garden.
Around every twist and turn in the path was another beautifully framed element making for a relaxed tranquil stroll in the evening sun, and yes, it was a beautiful garden and well worth the visit…especially if you have just eaten a box of donuts.
On a Saturday morning under the Burnside Bridge, in Waterfront Park, is the Portland Saturday Arts and Crafts market which has been operating since 1974.
Walking to it along the riverfront, rain was threatening and the river and the sky were a steely grey. It was a lovely stroll on a narrow walkway flanked by apartments painted the same colour as the autumn leaves which overlooked the river.
The impressive meccano-esque draw bridge looked splendid in the morning light and the ‘Old Town’ water tower peered down on us through the branches of the trees whilst the ‘Portland’ sign didn’t look so impressive in the drab daylight as it does all lit up and resplendent at night.
The market was excellent! A quality showcase of talent from over 250 local artists and craftspeople of the area. It was also quite a large market spread over a couple of zones. Partway through our stroll the heavens opened up and it poured with rain…if you were in the market area under the bridge you had a bit of shelter otherwise you were crowding into the small marquess of the stall holders. Rosie could have spent a lot more time wandering around if it wasn’t for the rain…The Operator had a lucky out due to the inclement weather.
So, what to do on a rainy afternoon in Portland? Rosie gave The Operator a choice of Art Galleries or a movie…it was no contest, before she knew it Rosie was being whisked off to The Bagdad Theater, one of Rosie’s favorite buildings and signage in town. It was just as glorious inside and what a theater experience.
Buy your jugs of beer or bottles of wine, order food and rest it all on the bench table in front of your comfy seat….back home you would have to pay for this ‘VIP’ service! Here, every seat is a VIP. Before the movie started a compere came out, dressed in a suit and tie with microphone in hand. He introduced the movie, explained where the exits were, common courtesies for your viewing pleasure, filled us in on upcoming events as this is a live music theater too…..all in his best ‘just for radio’ voice. He was even applauded by the audience as he left.
Like everyone else, Roise ordered a huge gigantically ginormous 5 liter bucket, literally. Of popcorn. The Operator said, wow, that is a big bucket to share. Rosie said she wasn’t sharing, this was for her, if The Operator wanted popcorn he had to order his own. The Operator was right, Rosie could only eat half of the bucket of buttery, husky goodness. What amazed Rosie and The Operator as we gazed into everyone else’s gigantic, ginormous buckets as we left after the movie…they were all empty! That was truly a ridiculous amount of popcorn. NB – A nice theater touch…the round of applause at the end of the movie as a sign of a good movie seen. Just like when the plane lands…this country loves showing appreciation.
Tomorrow Rosie and The Operator will show you around the awesome Mississippi suburb of Portland they were staying in and introduce to another weird Portland obsession….Food Trucks and Freedom of Speech. Stay tuned…and hungry.
