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Last updated: November 06. 2006 2:12PM
JOURNEYS
Coast to coast
A college town with a vibrant night life, an arts scene and plenty of fun places to dine by the water.
And it boasts a lot of history, including mysterious tunnels supposedly once used by smugglers, and even has a retired Navy vessel anchored downtown as a heritage attraction.
Wilmington? No, it’s Portland, Ore., the ‘City of Roses,’ where the Willamette River flows into the mighty Columbia. Home to more than half a million people, Portland might seem an unlikely twin for Wilmington. It’s Left Coast and the liberal heart of an unabashedly ‘blue’ state, where grunge rather than beach music is the local anthem.
It says a lot about Portland’s irreverent, populist tone that its most famous living native son is most likely Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons. (Groening borrowed the last names for several of his Simpsons characters from the Portland streets he walked as a boy.) Still, there are enough similarities to make Portland oddly familiar, and enough differences to make it tantalizing to explore. “It’s a substantial city, but it’s on a scale that makes it easy to get your bearings,” said former New Hanover County manager Allen O’Neal, who often detours into Portland from his current job as city manager in the nearby port community of Newport, Ore. “It feels smaller than it really is because the people are so friendly.”
O’Neal and his wife love to explore Portland’s downtown neighborhoods, each with a personality as distinct as those in Wilmington. There’s the Alphabet Historic District, with its turn-of-the-century Craftsman homes and its network of sidewalk cafes and specialty shops.
There’s the Pearl District. Once a warren of warehouses and industrial buildings, ‘the Pearl’ as locals call it, is fast being reclaimed as an artsy quarter, with plenty of galleries and small theaters, plus a major new Contemporary Crafts Museum, scheduled to open in 2007 at 134 NW Eighth Ave.
Close by the Pearl is Old Town, on the west bank of the Willamette, site of Portland’s original settlement and of the city’s old Chinatown, now a revived shopping district with museums and the Portland Classical Chinese Garden at the corner of Northwest Third and Everett streets (portlandchinesegarden.org).
Old Town is also the site of the notorious ‘Shanghai Tunnels,’ bricked underground passageways leading from downtown businesses to the waterfront. The tunnels’ legend is a bit different from that of Jacob’s Run and Wilmington’s bricked cistern system. Oldtimers claim that drunken or drugged sailors would be dragged along these passageways to be shanghaied onto sailing ships anchored in the harbor in the 1800s.
These days, Portland Underground Tours will lead you on a 90-minute walking excursion of the tunnels, with a guarantee that you (probably) won’t get kidnapped. Prices are $16 for adults, $11 for children; for details, call (503) 622-4798.
Founded in the 1840s as a lumber camp – and long nicknamed ‘Stumptown’ – Portland has rather less history than Wilmington does. Incorporated in 1851, it gained its name by a coin toss. City founders Francis W. Pettygrove from Portland, Maine, and Asa Lovejoy from Boston each wanted to name it for his own hometown. They flipped a coin, and Pettygrove won.
“There’s still a free spirit out here,” O’Neal said, “a kind of pioneer spirit.” Visitors will catch a lot of that spirit in Portland’s generally laid-back approach to fashion and to life. Casual Friday seems to stretch a whole week in much of Portland, where the plaid lumberjack shirt often takes the place of a corporate uniform.
Of course, though Port City residents love their casual wear as well, Portland does stand on its own in a variety of unique ways.
It’s mountainous. Portland is the only large American city with an extinct volcano, Mount Tabor, within its municipal limits. Snow-capped Mount Hood towers over the city’s skyline and offers a spectacular view – at least when it’s not cloudy or raining.
It’s a tree-huggin’ town. City planning initiatives of the 1970s limited suburban sprawl, so you reach storybook farms and the occasional vineyard just a few miles outside Portland. Biking is not mandatory, but pro-bike policies come close, and lots of Portlanders cycle to and from work. Given that the Nike sportswear company is headquartered in Beaverton, Ore., just seven miles away, hiking and jogging are big activities, with plenty of locally marked trails.
It’s a major league sports town, with the Trailblazers of the National Basketball Association holding home court at the Rose Garden Arena. Fans can also savor AAA baseball with the Portland Beavers, First Division soccer with the Portland Timbers, minor league ice hockey with the Portland Winter Hawks and indoor lacrosse with the Portland LumberJax.
But just like Wilmington, a high student population adds to the edgy, laid-back tone. Portland is home to four good-sized campuses: Lewis & Clark College, Reed College, Portland State University and the University of Portland, not to mention Oregon Health Sciences Universtiy (a medical complex known to locals as ‘Pill Hill’), the Art Institute of Portland, the Western Culinary Institute and a host of smaller schools.
Largely as a result, there’s a thriving local band scene, not to mention a year-round schedule of major concert tours.
Portland also inherited another name from its past: ‘Puddletown,’ for showers that seem nearly continuous throughout the year. Actually, the Portland area gets about the same rainfall as Wilmington does, around 45 inches per year. Since it’s not prone to hurricanes, coastal Oregon’s rainfall tends to come in the form of gentle mists, ideal for the harvests of farms in the nearby Willamette and Tulatin valleys.
The Portland Farmers Market, which migrates to different city parks around the year, is one of Portland’s major weekend attractions, well worth checking out for the home-grown raspberries, blueberries, marionberries and hazelnuts. (www.portlandfarmersmarket.org).
Thanks to the dominant Pacific marine climate, Portland enjoys mild weather year-round. Winter days seldom dip below 35 degrees; summer highs seldom exceed 80 degrees.
These conditions provide optimal conditions for growing Portland’s trademark, its gorgeous roses. Since its founding in 1917, the city’s International Rose Test Garden, near Washington Park, has been a mecca for rose fanciers worldwide. More than 10,000 varieties bloom here, in almost any imaginable shade, and more types are being added each year. (www.rosegardenstore.org).
Portland’s rose mania predates the gardens. In 1907, Mayor Harry Lane launched the Portland Rose Festival, an annual celebration that’s grown to major proportions.
Each June, an estimated 2 million visitors attend the event, many of them lining a 4.3-mile route downtown to see the annual Rose Parade. City fathers also crown a Rose Queen, chosen from one of Portland’s 14 high schools. (Having been at least a Rose Princess is almost the local equivalent of being a debutante.) The this year the 2007 Festival, scheduled for June 7-10, will mark the event’s centennial.
For local residents, the East Coast will always be where their heart is. But Portland may be that West Coast city that retains the right amount of attitude, elements and charm to make it feel like home.
The best of what Portland has to offer
Our picks for can’t-miss Portland attractions (and great food and drinks, too).
Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside St., which claims to be the largest new and used bookstore in the world. If it doesn’t live up to the hype, it comes close.
Occupying an entire city block, Powell’s multi-story facility stocks more than 1 million books in nine major, color-coded sections. Book sign-ings, author readings and related events regularly draw crowds. One agreeable feature for readers: Powell’s stocks new and used copies of the same book side by side, so you can comparison shop. Naturally, there’s an attached coffee shop – this is the Pacific Northwest, after all – and even an art gallery tucked away among the shelves.
Actually, Powell’s is a network of five bookstores in the Portland area. Powell’s Technical Books at 33 Northwest Park Ave., is a haven for computer geeks and science fiction fans. Check out the Web site at www.powells.com.
Multnomah Falls. If you have time and access to a car, you’ll want to drive out of Portland along I-84 to take in the scenery of the Colum-bia River Gorge. The route offers lots of vistas and detours, but it’s hard to beat Multnomah Falls, the nation’s third-highest year-round waterfall, tumbling some 620 feet down the side of Larch Mountain. You can savor the falls at your leisure over a pleasant lunch at The Lodge, a stone 1920s mansion that’s on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Japanese Gardens, on the west side of Washington Park, just a short walk from the International Rose Test Garden. Designed by horticulturist Tamuka Tono in the 1960s, the gardens authentically reflect the influence of Shinto, Zen Buddhist and Taoist traditions in Japanese gardens, creating an island of serenity in an urban landscape. (www.japanesegarden.com).
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1945 Southeast Water Ave.
So well known and even ranked as one of the Top 10 science museums in the nation, the museum’s kid-friendly facility includes an OMNIMAX theater, planetarium, hands-on science experiments and the USS Blueback, the Navy’s last non-nuclear fast-attack submarine. A Cold War veteran, the first sub to use the distinctive ‘teardrop’ design, Blueback appeared in the movie The Hunt for Red October. It’s enjoyment for the entire family. Don’t forget to test your paper airplanes in OMSI’s wind machine.
The beer. Portlanders claim to have started the microbrew revolution and more than 30 breweries are operating within city limits, including Widmer Bros., Pyramid, Full Sail, BridgePort and Hair of the Dog. Pete’s Wicked Ale is brewed not far from O’Neal’s office in Newport, Ore. There’s even a local society of beer snobs, Support Native Oregon Beer. (http://oregonbeer.org).
The food. You can find almost any style of cooking in Portland, from French patisseries to Ethiopian. Given the Pacific exposure and the large Asian population, the Chinese and Japanese restaurants are especially good. Many of the top Portland dining spots promote ‘Northwest cuisine,’ which leans heavily on local seafood, steak bred on Oregon farms, fresh fruits and vegetables often raised just a day or two away, with a strong influence on Asian flavors.
Great culinary tastes can also be found at the Saturday Portland Market, which takes place under the Burnside Bridge on the west side of the Willamette River.
For a guide of all things Portland, buy Portland Monthly magazine, available at local newsstands or check out happenings online at
www.portland-monthly.com.
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