Saturday, November 24, 2007

Portland, Oregon

For Thanksgiving, T and I took a trip to Portland. T's dad and his wife just moved there. An ever-growing number of friends from many walks of life have also moved there. It seems that all roads are leading to Portland.

We had Thanksgiving with the family.

Then we visited our friends John and Anna in their cool house.

We hung out with Brendt, Nina, Dennis and Julian.


T, Wendy, Clay and I viewed the ghostly paintings at the Kennedy School.
Mick and I have been playing Scrabble for almost twenty years now. He won this time.



While I was there, I had the distinct sensation that I had to move there, whether I wanted to or not, because everything was just so danged perfect. Here is a brief and in no way complete list of perfect things I encountered there.

  1. Incredibly short lines in the airport, during a usually-insane holiday time.
  2. Unbearably delicious meals in adorable surroundings at Lovely Hula Hands, Mother's, and The Screen Door. If you ever go to Lovely Hula Hands, be sure to try a cocktail called Talulah's Bathwater.
  3. Evidence everywhere of superb urban planning and environmental awareness, with all kinds of amazing parking, bicycling and traffic calming innovations.
  4. Attractive, affordable houses everywhere.

However, the fact that most buildings were one, and at most, two stories high kind of bugged me, urbanite that I am. I remember someone (I think it may have been my friend Allan) saying disparagingly of Portland: "It's nothing but a bunch of houses." Well, kind of, yeah, but a bunch of houses doesn't look too bad to a real-estate starved Bay Area resident like me.

4 comments:

Kim said...

But think of all the wonderful things (and people!) you'd leave behind! Don't do it!

Unknown said...

Linda - Listen to that inner voice. I'm sure you know that saying about how it's better to regret something you've done...

Christa said...

Portland move or no, you MUST supply the recipe for the Talulah's Bathwater cocktail!

Anonymous said...

Well, we really can't move to Portland, for various reasons, at least not in the near term.

So we will live in a shoebox here. And like it.

Talulah's bathwater is made of tequila, pomegranate molasses, and fresh lime. Apparently pomegranate molasses is a key item in middle eastern cooking, and is made of pomegranates, lemon, and sugar.

Linda