Portland Recs

Portland Places:

Intro:

List:

Mother Foucault's Books - one of the best bookstores I've ever been too — great selection, beautiful interior

Monograph Bookworks - Alberta Street - really good selection of artbooks/monographs/ephemera etc.

Alberta Street Institutions: I used to go there most often since it was closest to where I grew up outside of portland and there was a lot of cheap food to eat there in high school. Salt and Straw is big now, NYC etc., Little Big Burger fell off, Pine State Biscuits used to be a classic, Tin Shed is v Portland, I used to skip school to go to the Case Study Coffee there and read.

Blue Moon Camera nd Machine - St. John's. Pretty incredible camera shop, only place still doing optical printing in color in the USA that I'm aware of. Great stock of vintage equipment as well + the St. John's Bridge is really pretty. Lots of good Mexican food around here too.

Hollywood Theater — I was recently ranking the best movie theaters I've ever been too and realized this was #1. Gorgeous building, solid programming for Portland standards, sometimes there's a great 35mm or 70mm print that rolls thru. The Portland Art Museum used to have good films and then COVID but I think it's back. I also like Cinema 21 in NW Portland.

NW Portland general things: 23rd avenue is the major artery + burnside street. Downtown went to shit after the pandemic/riots etc. But I feel like there's some solid dives once ur far enough west on Burnside, like past the Volvo dealership with the giant signage. Zupan's is a hella portland grocery store on 23rd/Burnside. Portland Erewhon I guess. 23rd has a bunch of restaurants but I can't really remember what's great. There's a dessert place Papa Haydn's. And then a French bakery, St. Honore's, that's pretty decent, but not great once you've been to France. Japanese gardens are nice too.

Sellwood waterfront — really beautiful, kinda tucked away but the neighborhood's gotten way trendier the last few years I think, liberal arts college spillover from Reed + Lewis & Clark maybe idk for sure. Oaks Park was the amusement park as a kid + is also in that area. Bunch of food and bars in this area but idk what's good tbh

Random restaurant recs, again idk how much they hold up b/c Time: Andina - Peruvian place in the Pearl District, Le Pigeon - French place, Langbaan - prix fixe hyped thai place, Kann - fancy new Haitian spot but I haven't actually been, Akadi - fire West African food, there as this great tapas place Toro Bravo that closed, Ox was closeby and solid, Bamboo sushi local sustainable sushi classic chain, sizzle pie cheap eat, by powell's tourist central but that's kinda the point. powell's is like the strand of portland (or vice versa) which means it's fine but i don't rlly fw it. then like Ethiopian food is good - Abyssinian Kitchen, Bete-Lukas, Queen of Sheba. If you go up into Vancouver, there's a fire Georgian place called Dediko. There's also a bunch of great Eastern European grocery stores in Vancouver, not so much in Portland, but Kachka is bougie Russian food. I'm also like comparing these things against NYC / Sheepshead Bay / Brighton Beach and it's not as lit but still.

Other Misc. Streets: Mississippi Avenue — went to a vegan ice cream place w/ my friend called Kate's last time I was back. German bar called Prost! is good. Broder is also good scandinavian brunch vibe + there are a few locations. The best one's in Hood River which is a couple of hours up the gorge. Williams Ave is parallel and has also kinda popped off. Fremont, Division, and Hawthorne are popular East/West streets w/ lots of stuff. If you're into wings and/or vegan wings I really like Fire on the Mountain. It's one of the only places I regularly hit whenever I'm back and the only place I get vegan wings. Usually at the Fremont location.

Mentioned the gorge so I think gotta expand outwards now. The Maryhill Museum of Art is about 2 hours from Portland but one of the best museums I've ever been to. Incredible eclectic collection b/c it's just this rich guy's shit, which is v different than the PAM collection which is pretty orthodox and curated in an orthodox-identitypolitics-typeway. What I mean by this is they have a bunch of dresses at Maryhill from the Théâtre de la Mode which was Post-WW2 styles in France from when they didn't have enough fabric for runway shows but still needed to present new styles. so like Balmain on a big doll, beautiful staging, etc. — also some solid Eastern Orthodox icons + random Romanian paintings, great chess sets, Rodin sculpture casts, + pretty solid regional painting as well. The guy who built it also built his own Stonehenge replica close by that goes pretty hard.

Vista House at Crown Point is pretty beautiful. I used to have this weird job where I'd drive around taking pictures of foreclosed houses in towns around Portland so I saw most of them. Boring is in that area, kinda charming in a depressed way, there was a Blockbuster there in 2018 idk if it's still there. Same sort of charm for Sandy, Estacada, and Molalla. Not really "nice" places but the drives in those areas are just phenomenal. Another drive rec if you go up the gorge / to Maryhill / to any hikes would be to take Highway 14 on the washington side instead of I-84. It's slower and curvier but also much higher up, dramatic views, places to pull over the look/flick up/enjoy the view, etc. Multnomah falls the classic tourist hike, Dog Mountain is further east and is great, Beacon Rock + Cape Horn not as far out + also solid. Carson has some solid food, Hood River too, everywhere has microbreweries now, that's the thing. There's also a lot of wineries but that wasn't rlly my thing when I lived there...

Last thing is a Go West guide — Astoria has one of my favorite bridges ever, Cannon Beach / Seaside are beautiful + I really love the Oregon/Washington coast. I don't really like getting in the water so my ideal day there is when it's cold/overcoast/rainy/foggy and how that works with the rocky landscape.