Where did Spring go and off to Oregon.

July 2, 2014, Portland, Oregon

We got back from South America and got so involved with the house, with friends’s visits and John’s on the campaign for mayor that Spring passed and Summer has arrived.   We made two trips to Boston along the way, enjoyed our grandson and seemed to just enjoy ourselves, rather quietly when at home.  Perhaps a good way to spend the season.  

We left yesterday for Oregon and are now in a BnB in the southeast section of the city.    We spent yesterday flying and then had lunch and dinner at restaurants very different from each other. 

First, a description of Portland.   This is Ben’s first trip in living memory.   He was here as a little boy age five or six.  John has not been here since he worked at the White House Conference on Small Business in the late 1970s.   It still has a very western sense about it, though in some ways the architecture is reminiscent of the Berkeley Hills or the older settled sections of Los Angeles.  It is a creature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  And, it is surrounded by dormant volcanoes, though Mt. St. Helen’s did blow its top between now and John’s last visit. 

Dormant Volcanoes

It’s very, very green, despite the temperature’s being near 100F (38C) and the sun’s beating down.  It was hotter here yesterday than at home in Washington.   We are traveling through Portland on our way to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland where we will meet up with our hosts Jane and Peter from California, and other friends from our trip on the Canal de Bourgogne several years ago.  

Portland is totally revitalized from when John was last here.  Then there were no streetcars, there were few restaurants, the Pearl Arts District did not exist and downtown was a deserted office hub.   John doesn’t remember that the Willamette (Will-AM-met) River was much of anything.    Now the city is alive with shops, bustling with people, mostly young, searching out good coffees (Ben loves that), and drinking the local brews.  The town says it is sometimes called “Brewvana.”  To give you a sense of the change, Ben read that many of the young people here call Brooklyn, NYC, the “Portland of the East.”

We drove into the city from the airport and decided, with help of the tourist office at the airport, to lunch in the Pearl District.  It’s an area of redone warehouses and factories north and east of downtown that was probably on the way to dereliction in the 1970s.  Now it’s loaded with apartments, reconstructed old breweries and factories, and lots of restaurants, art galleries, upscale shops (we salivated a bit over Jack Spade’s clothes shop), and lunch!  We learned that one of the art gallery owners renamed the area as the Pearl District because it had turned an ugly oyster shell into a pearl.

Pearl District Street Art

Pearl District Deco

We had lunch at the Zeus restaurant just off Burnside Street.   It’s in an old hotel on a side street.    The meal included tiny little manila clams in a white wine sauce, made with wines from the White Rabbit Winery.  Lovely, sweet clams that melted as they slithered down.   John had a Hammerton Brewery ale, very reminiscent of English beer, and we split a falafel sandwich with lovely tzatziki dressing and french fries that were nicknamed “truffled”, probably from their mushroom scented spicing.  

From there we walked around the district, and then had fine coffee at Peet’s.   

It took us a while to find the Clinton Street Guest House because Portland has lots of one way streets.  It’s in a 1910-1925 neighborhood of clapboard craftsman style bungalows and on very shaded streets.   Do remember that Portland is very rainy most of the time, though not right in the middle of summer.   Despite the 100F temperature John was reminded as he looks over some dried moss on that local roofs that in winter they warn visitors not to stand too still.   The story goes if you remain standing still too long, moss will grow on your backside.

The inn is not old fashioned, though the building is older.  The room is spacious and has two bathrooms, just across the hall.    It is air conditioned, and very, very quiet.   We think it only has three bedrooms.   We will see what breakfast is like before we head off to Ashland.

We had dinner last night with Steve, an old friend from John’s journalism days in Washington when he worked for Business Week.  Steve was with the Wall Street Journal and they would run into each other covering energy stories.   Steve now lives in St. John’s, an old working suburb up the Willamette River just before it joins the Columbia.  It’s a somewhat quaint town, undergoing gentrification, much to the distress of the older residents who probably worked the wharfs and the railroad yards along the Willamette, and probably still do.   

Friend Steve

Our dinner was at Dub’s Restaurant in the Ranger Tavern.   It’s a true piece of downhome America.   The owner, William, moved from Northeast Washington, not far from our home, to Oregon and a few months ago bought the restaurant inside the bar.   He specializes in Southern and soul food, which is lots of fun, though not always to our tastes.  We tend to think it is too often deep fried and too heavy, but John found William’s food very enjoyable.  He had an old fashioned style meat loaf with beans,cooked Southern style with sausage and lots of sweetness, some collard greens, which were very soft and cooked to perfection and a very light square of cornbread, suitably buttered.    Steve had his chicken dinner, with fries and cornbread — do remember that Southern food tends to be rather high on the carbs.   Ben had fish and chips, which he decided were OK, but not so good as John and Steve found their meatloaf and chicken.   This, for John and Steve, was washed down by the local brew.

Of course the conversation helped make the meal and on top of that we wish William great success with his venture.   

Today we head off to Ashland.  We’ll stop to find coffee in some esoteric coffee house along the way and arrive in time for dinner and theater this evening.