Best Thing about Portland
What is the best thing about Portland?
I’ve come to appreciate and enjoy a great many things about Portland, OR. I’m hard-pressed to decide on just one thing in particular. I’ll highlight a few:
Their public transit system. Their website is very intuitive, and they service most of the far-off and popular places in the area. Their usefulness fades after dark, when their schedules become anemic and oftentimes disappear altogether for the day, but such is the nature of its peak usefulness. My favorite part is the light rail system. I still think the MAX is a spiffy thing to ride, except during peak times in which people are packed like sardines and still more people bid to enter. Aside from the limitations of its hours and its reach, I can travel most anywhere in about an hour and a half, and in many cases, under an hour. And, not having a car (*grumbles*), I’m rather dependent on it to get around. I’m thankful it exists at all. I prefer this bus system to the others I’ve had the opportunity to experience in my life.
The food carts. Called “pods” by the locals, these kitchens on wheels have been built on small 4×8 single- and dual-axeled trailers with plywood, finished with a roof (usually flat, some get fancy with peaks and eaves), optional finish on the outside, painted to look like a miniature house or your average billboard, with a window and a platform facing out towards the sidewalk. Every kind of cuisine is represented in pods, and there are even non-food carts intermixed with them.
I’m not sure what sorts of licenses and inspections are required to run a place like that, but the druid’s favorite pod serves the biggest burgers you’ve ever seen on gratuitously large buns with so many fixings you can barely manage to wrap your mouth around the entire thing before inhaling. That particular pod owner is the graduate of some sort of top school, having worked with some of the top chefs in the world. He quit his day job and opened his pod, and he’s been very happy and in business seven years hence. Each pod has an interesting story, and more open all the time. There’s a parking lot of food carts a few blocks away, most dishes at an even $5 each. Good stuff. Makes me want to open one. For casseroles. lol
The scenery. Landscapes and urban sprawl, picturesque waterfalls and natural wonders, historical buildings and funky construction, all under a canopy of green trees and grey skies. I’ve been to Multnomah Falls twice, and along the Columbia Gorge once. I want to visit the Japanese Garden someday, and there are so many other things I’ve seen and have yet to seen that I could write an entire series of entries on just this topic. It’s not strictly Portland specific but certainly topical.
Keeping it weird. Everything from zombie walks to pillow fights to Santa bar hopping to naked bike rides to quite a few other uniquely Portlandia activities, makes this place a bit unusual. It brings focus to the city, its people, and its businesses. I have yet to participate in something but I am sure as I increase my visibility in the area, I’ll be invited to something or another. In fact, I would have gone to the Pirate Festival but as my chosen-mom had just passed away, I was not emotionally able to bear going.
Its culture. I’m talking about every stereotype and undefinable subset of people here. It’s refreshing to be in a city where not everyone wears business suits (NYC), or everyone wears sweats (Seattle, WA), and so on. There are groupings of all types represented here. I love that it’s friendly to the GLBTA community. It’s very liberal and I very much like it that way.
The weather. Rain is prevalent in the Pacific Northwest on the whole, with a mild climate all year ’round. I like rain. It makes things green. Except people, it makes them blue. It makes me happy, it reminds me very much of my childhood home, except a more moderate rain total per year, which I find very appealing.
There’re many other things, these’re just what I pulled out of my head for now.
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Challenge yourself to Holidailies 2009 by writing one entry each day in December.
Can you blog each day for an entire month? Try it!
