In Portland. Will post photos when I get back to the office. Impressions follow.
Beautiful hills and so fucking green, my eyes can't get over it.
Coffee is actually more common than water here, and that's saying something with all the bubblers/fountains in the area due to some guy's obsession with temperence and making sure that you don't dive into the bottle because there's tasty H20 available. Stumptown Coffee buys their own beans direct, using fair trade practices, roasts them themselves, and then french press the dark brew. Oh, it is tasty, my friends.
Book and reading are king here - Powell's takes up a whole city block and required a great deal of willpower for me not to spend all my available cash there. Reading Frenzy supplied me with enough zines to keep Kristin happy with me for the next few months. I think I could actually burn down the house and as long as she had her Moonlight Chronicles issues. They also had the best t-shirt I've seen in a while - a cat looking very, very angry and the phrase CLAWS BEAT SKIN in bold letters. I'd buy one if it wasn't only available in Tiny Hipster Sizes.
There's a lot of hippies. But they don't bug you as long as you're not wearing a Bush/Cheney 04 shirt.
Excalibur Comics on Hawthorne in South East Portland (they've got their own system of splitting the city in two, based on streets and the Williamette river) is a damned fine shop. I picked up some odds and ends and had an outrageous deal cut for me on a Superman book that I had to turn down. It hurt. Bad.
Doug and Kari are the world's best hosts, making sure that I was always comfortable and putting up with my stupid questions, especially the most common, "Where are we, again?" They also got me invited over to brunch at Stephanie and Chris's place, where I had tasty lox and met two groovy kids. All in all, it's been a good fact-finding and sight-seeing trip. I've picked up a copy of The Zinesters Guide To Portland and it appears that I may have to visit again real soon now.
Beautiful hills and so fucking green, my eyes can't get over it.
Coffee is actually more common than water here, and that's saying something with all the bubblers/fountains in the area due to some guy's obsession with temperence and making sure that you don't dive into the bottle because there's tasty H20 available. Stumptown Coffee buys their own beans direct, using fair trade practices, roasts them themselves, and then french press the dark brew. Oh, it is tasty, my friends.
Book and reading are king here - Powell's takes up a whole city block and required a great deal of willpower for me not to spend all my available cash there. Reading Frenzy supplied me with enough zines to keep Kristin happy with me for the next few months. I think I could actually burn down the house and as long as she had her Moonlight Chronicles issues. They also had the best t-shirt I've seen in a while - a cat looking very, very angry and the phrase CLAWS BEAT SKIN in bold letters. I'd buy one if it wasn't only available in Tiny Hipster Sizes.
There's a lot of hippies. But they don't bug you as long as you're not wearing a Bush/Cheney 04 shirt.
Excalibur Comics on Hawthorne in South East Portland (they've got their own system of splitting the city in two, based on streets and the Williamette river) is a damned fine shop. I picked up some odds and ends and had an outrageous deal cut for me on a Superman book that I had to turn down. It hurt. Bad.
Doug and Kari are the world's best hosts, making sure that I was always comfortable and putting up with my stupid questions, especially the most common, "Where are we, again?" They also got me invited over to brunch at Stephanie and Chris's place, where I had tasty lox and met two groovy kids. All in all, it's been a good fact-finding and sight-seeing trip. I've picked up a copy of The Zinesters Guide To Portland and it appears that I may have to visit again real soon now.
