On Portland

Went to London and Paris and had a great time, but leading the pack by leaps and bounds so far this year for favorite destination city is surprising, underhyped, lowdown, weird-as-hell Portland. I can't keep track of all the times Aya, Chris and I looked at each other laughing, wondering why and how we were having such a great time in a place we'd been practically discouraged to visit.

Having easygoing, funny, spontaneous travel partners helped:

Chris, Busby, and Aya

The primary, essential elements of our trip:

Cookies. All coffee should automatically come with cookies.

Plaid. Turns out this is required in Portland. We literally ended up changing into recently-bought second-hand plaid shirts at a bus stop due to city-wide peer pressure.

Book, specifically Powell's City of Books, which beats Moe's, City Lights AND The Abbey hands down. Please note that this picture is of just ONE of many stacks of used, super cheap copies of Metamorphosis ALONE.

Excellent hosts made the city feel immediately welcome, and are perfect examples of the borderline-creepy friendliness of the general Portland population:

Richard, Kelly and Chris

And the place we stayed was not bad, for $10 each per night:

And the hikes. Oh, the hikes!





But it was the mentality that we could immediately feel, the unhurried pace, the unconcerned attitude, the predisposition to helpfulness and friendliness, that made it painfully hard to leave this place knowing that we'd be returning to San Francisco, to UCSF, to tall buildings and on time and no time and all the time, to a neighborhood where your plaid has to be tight and ironic, to a daily push to BE ON TOP.

Of what? For what? Where is my coffee? I miss Portland.