Entries Tagged 'The City' ↓

Three days in Portland. Hyper-caffeinated, hyper-pollinated (the sidewalks are literally paved with flowers and allergies have got my head spinning) and, well, pretty satisfied. I think m’lady and I barely scratched the surface of this town, even as we hopped on dozens of transit lines and trekked untold avenues. Portland is a town with a story to tell, how the working class grit and vagrant grime insinuates itself into the elegant natural beauty and how the disconcerting boom in development affects that narrative. I hope to make it back soon to learn more.

We stayed at the Ace Hotel, which was unquestionably the most fun I’ve had staying in a hotel. Records spin on a turntable in the lobby; Stumptown coffee shoots rich espresso from futuristic looking Marzoccos and a thin but nonetheless enticing brew from the Clovers; the rooms are minimalist in decor, but with a nod to the Northwest setting with rough-hewn wood, army green wool blankets and grey accents. Also, Powells is a block away.

The public transit is pretty stellar. Snow-capped mountains are within sight. Greenery abounds and you can practically follow your nose to excellent coffee. I think I saw more people on bikes than I did on the bus. Fam-dam-tastic. One of the best things we did was attend a cupping at the Stumptown annex on SE Belmont. There were a few curious people who happened by but I think we were the only ones who showed up specifically to sniff, slurp and spit. Moving from a couple Brazilians to Guatemala to a sexy Kenyan to Sumatran, this was a chance to really indulge the senses in the flavor profiles of very diverse beans. It was, for me, a religious experience, the coffee-lover’s eucharist, and the Stumptown folk were knowledgeable guides and super friendly.

For all the arts, craft and music that seems to flood out of Portland I was surprised by the relative calm of the place. Granted, it was a holiday weekend. But on public transit, in restaurants and shops, and on the streets there was never anything approaching a bustle. The lone exception was the Saturday farmers market which was insane. There seemed to be a special event coinciding that was bluntly though aptly named Graze Fest or something. It gave me the idea that the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market could utilize corrals to separate the grazers and Flickr whores from the locals actually trying to buy produce. That same dilemma was very much at play here, although the locals were not shy about swinging their baskets around to make progress. Don’t make the same mistake we did and step off MAX at the obvious neon sign proclaiming Portland Saturday Market. Had we checked our notes we would have avoided this location, which is what we did after two minutes stepping astride street urchins and craft tents selling dreamcatchers.

What else? We caught Spoon at the Doug Fir Lounge, which is an eye candy extravaganza but none too shy in its more modest surroundings. We also saw Arcade Fire in a beautiful theater. I apologize to Portlanders for taking your tickets, but these two shows just kind of fit with our trip. Give me a shout when you come down here and I’ll point you to some of our better venues.

Some highlights:
Coffee
Fresh Pot (french press just for you)
Stumptown (the annex does cuppings at 11:00 and 3:00)

Food
Pearl Bakery
Simpatica (great breakfast served on communal tables just outside the clamor of the caterer’s kitchen)

Place
North Portland - Mississippi Ave (fun neighborhood with views of bridges, river and downtown)
Washington Park (MAX takes you right there and we walked back to town via the Wildwood trail)

Other
Zinester’s Guide to Portland ($5 perfect size to whip out at a cafe and not look like a travel dork)

Sometimes between the bustle and relative sameness of the morning commute the strange little parts of life can slide right by. Thank god for the olfactory system to jolt your frontal lobes from slumber.

This bold soul found a fitting streetside commode and dropped trou as several folks stood waiting for the bus. I didn’t even notice until he was zipping up.

Biking home from work a couple weeks ago, a couple of guys in an Olds with a ‘God Bless America’ sticker ran me off the road. They both got out of their car near a busy intersection and one ran towards me shouting ‘Get a car, you homo!’

There seems to be something about driving that can turn reasonable people into impatient, even obnoxious jerks. I definitely notice the tendency in myself on the rare occasions I’m behind the wheel. For a small group of individuals though, driving appears to trigger sociopathic tendencies. I’ve been run off the road many times. I’ve had trash thrown at me. A mom revved her car behind me while her young kids flipped me off from the back seat. I’ve even been head-butted - ok that was as a pedestrian.

A column on Monday reported that an angry swarm of Critical Mass bikers attacked a minivan while children were screaming away inside. No journalistic inquiry into the provocation. No eyewitness commentary. Just the driver’s account of a vicious mob acting inhumanely. Maybe it’s my own experience, or just say, common sense, but I was quite skeptical of this scenario. Over the last couple days a broader picture has emerged and the details are not surprising to me. A reporter at the Bay Guardian was present at the incident and gives his account

A driver gets angry and impatient after getting stuck in Critical Mass and tries to drive through the crowd (which is stupid, illegal, and dangerous). To prevent injuries, the standard practice in such cases is for riders to place themselves and their bikes in front of the car. She hits said bicyclist (sure, maybe not hard enough to produce an injury, as you pointed out, but contact is contact) and then keeps driving forward. The rest of the bicyclists urge her to just stop driving, please, which she refuses to do because at this point she’s agitated and indignant. They pound on her windows, pleading with her to stop driving into a crowd of hundreds of bicyclists with her deadly object. Pretty soon, a bicyclist loses it and smashes her window

And here’s a television interview with some women who also witnessed the incident.

This kind of reportage and the actions of this driver and many others stem from the same asinine, but thoroughly ingrained idea: a car has the absolute right of way on the road. Bicyclists and pedestrians in America make up a fraction of those on the road but suffer 11 to 36 times higher fatalities than car occupants. And yet there remains this perception by some that, golly, drivers have it tough out there. Hooey.

People are so bent on getting from point A to B as fast as possible they neglect the repercussions of their behavior. Unsafe streets, riled up commuters, pollution. The automobile has been a major negative force in public health, climate change, urban planning, not to mention sucking away the funding and infrastructure for decent public transit and high speed rail. Now is not the time to crack down on “rogue” bikers, but a time to push for education and real policy towards improving the safety and health of everyone. A city with more bikes, more pedestrians and for the love of jesus, a better MUNI is something I think most of us can agree is a positive thing.

So to those good ol boys in the Oldsmobile and others, I say: Get a bike, you 20th century troglodyte. It’s good clean fun.

The title of this post, by the way, is from friend to the people, Willie Brown, who shook his Italian-tailored cuff at the bikers in Critical Mass back in the day.

I used to walk by the corner of Seventh and Market on a daily basis. No single place in the city can hold the dubious honor of homeless epicenter, but to my mind this area is definitely one of many. The drunk, destitute, strung-out and mentally ill are always present. Camped out around the fabled fountain of United Nations Plaza, begging in front of the 24-hour check-cashing storefront, or simply passed out on the sidewalk. Scattered fragments from the riven social welfare programs.

On the opposite side of the street was a sign that would always catch my eye on my walk to MUNI. It read

Rot In Hell Reagan

A strangely poetic epitaph, in the face of all this mayhem. Reagan’s legacy is rendered cruelly and plainly on the streets as well as on MUNI, which seems to attract more than its share of the mentally unstable.

Sometimes these MUNI rides are slightly amusing.

There was the guy who whipped out a garage opener, held it up to his ear and started mimicking the cell phone conversation of another passenger.

Or the ragged fellow in fluorescent lipstick and Sharpie eyeshadow who brought an ab machine on the bus and proceeded to peer at people through its holes.

The unidentifiable hobbit drawing everyone’s attention in an ersatz black burka.More often the scenario is like it was yesterday. A man boards the back of a packed bus shouting epithets in a jumbled conversation with himself. He flips off the driver. He dares anyone to intervene. We just have to endure it. It’s time like these I curse MUNI and think, rot in hell Reagan.

A recent shot that didn’t quite capture the moment as elegantly as I was hoping, but I still like the idea. Man uses a pay phone - something you don’t see that often anymore - and a tree sprouts from him to spread out over the wall.

More photos (many of which you’ve already seen) coming soon.

Why is rice so…ingrained (Thank you, good night!) with the culinary iconography of San Francisco? In a city where you can find just about every imaginable food and drink, artisan-crafted and locally produced, must we still have to suffer the shame of Rice-A-freakin-Roni? Nothing about salty-buttery rice and pasta conjures up “treat” in my mind. And unless it’s the mystery product all the tourists are eating out of bread bowls at Fisherman’s Wharf, I dare say it’s not very “San Francisco” either.

Rice is also unfortunately a mainstay of that other much vaunted SF treat - the burrito. Why people continue to ruin a perfectly designed meat vehicle with the starchy equivalent of styrofoam peanuts, I’ll never understand. Lord above, what I wouldn’t give for a decent taqueria in this city.

The real San Francisco treat is, gloriously, free of rice and can be found near a fairly non-descript corner of the city at Mitchell’s Ice Cream. Once the rain clears, head out on a walk one night soon. Admire the holiday lights and decorations as you wind your way through neighborhood streets out to San Jose Ave and 29th St. Get the peppermint candy flavor on a cone of your choosing, and for god’s sake, get it chocolate-dipped. This, my friends, is a taste of heaven.