The Magical City of Portland

The crosswalk was about to turn red and yet no one was jogging across the road to make it in time. People walked leisurely to the curb and continued to chat with one another as the light turned and the cars edged forward. As we passed random strangers made eye contact, and some even smiled. Have we entered the twilight zone? Has the American population become infected with crippling brain disease? Nope, we’ve just reached the Northwest coast.

Portland, Oregon. I’ve been hearing legends about this new epicenter of hip for years now. Nestled right among the rugged and beautiful landscape of Northern Oregon, Portland has become known out on the East Coast for its commitment to sustainability and green living, its booming bohemian culture, and its slow paced friendliness. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the rumors are true. Portland DOES kick ass.

Over the course of a long weekend we met more people than we’ve talked to our entire trip thus far. The long list of friendly faces began with Happy, an aptly named hostel employee who showed us around the old house turned cozy hostel in the trendy Hawthorne district. With every question the two short pigtails on top of Happy’s cropped head bobbed up and down as he smiled… and smiled, and smiled. Everyone ate breakfast together in a sunlit front room with a big wooden table. Complete strangers from all over the world shared suggestions about what to see in Portland and made plans together for the following night. The city wore off on all of us.

We spent our first day walking up and down the streets of the Hawthorne neighborhood, stopping to check out the eclectic mix of vintage stores, Tibetan art outposts, record stores, and coffee shops. We ordered a Portland original called “The Whole Bowl”— a delicious mix of rice, beans, avocado, sour cream, and special sauce. That night we made our only mistake in Portland and ate at a vegan Thai restaurant that was suggested to us. Warning: Do not eat vegan Thai unless you are a vegan. There’s a reason why they put fish sauce in Thai food and that reason is called deliciousness. Blech. On top of the mediocrity some sort of gluten bomb was slipped into my food, which prompt exploded in the form of a massive gluten hangover the next day. After this sole faux pas we caught a three dollar movie at a theater/bar called the Baghdad Theater. Later that night we ended up meeting a guy who was sitting outside the bar with his guitar. He invited us to his birthday party the next day where there would be all night jamming and thirty pounds of bacon (I’m not kidding).

We spent the next day downtown, lost in the magical, three-story Mecca of literature known as Powell’s Books. The largest independent bookstore in the country, Powell’s had Sebastian and I wandering around like sheep in a book-educed daze. We staggered out hours later and ate some Indian food from a small village of ethnic food carts, which included Czech, Greek, Brazilian, and Thai food among many, many others. That night we went out to a couple bars and ended up talking to several different people. Although every conversation we had was different they were all similar in the same respect. Every person we met was in love with Portland. They glowed when they talked about the city. They wholeheartedly entreated us to move there and they always left us with the same bit of advice: Follow your joy. From the guitarist, to the longshoreman with tattoos up both arms, to the software designer who looked like Miles Davis, to the Mexican man selling flower art at the Saturday craft fair, they all said the same thing— Do what you love, always. Maybe that’s why everyone here is so goddamn friendly, they’re actually HAPPY with their lives. Huh, what a novel idea. I wonder if New York has heard of it.