Tell me this guy Dave doesn’t know Portland. He likes “beer, soccer, basketball, books, pinball, and festivals that serve beer, amongst many other things.”
Okay, so there’s no biking. But, I mean other than that? Dave knows Portland is an awesome Portland blog covering Portland’s favorite topics:
I used to make mental note of the dates and times of upcoming Timbers matches, eating contests, festivals, fairs, and events in and around town, and pester my friends with the information via email weekly as the events beckoned. If it had a beer garden, I was on it!
Luckily, Dave has stopped harassing his friends and has started harassing us by posting his insights to a blog.
If you want to know what’s happening in Portland, Dave knows Portland is an awesome place to start.
Working downtown is great for many reasons, but one of the more entertaining aspects is the free music and movies in Pioneer Square.
Every summer, there are movies shown in the square on these giant inflatable screens. It’s called Flicks on the bricks (so named for the bricks in Pioneer Square). Just show up, sit down, and enjoy! Here’s a pic from last year. Maybe I’ll see you on Friday at the Goonies!
And in the same location, you can enjoy Noon Tunes, free live music. Just grab some grub at the carts and head on over to the square for some live entertainment!
I recently learned that the South Waterfront district is hosting a series of free sustainability discussions for those who are interested in learning more about our environmental impact. I’m a big fan of free events designed to educate the public. I have been involved in helping to organize many free technology events for the Portland technology community through my work with Legion of Tech.
Basically the South Waterfront district is hosting a series of talks with local sustainability gurus, it’s free and open to the public, and they even provide some catering and wine while bringing in a different sustainability expert each time. The next installment is July 10th 6-8pm at the Discovery Center (0680 SW Bancroft) with Regina Hauser, the Executive Director of the Oregon Natural Step Network. She will be discussing the Natural Step’s approach to living a more sustainable lifestyle. Here is a snippet from the description on the South Waterfront Sustainability Event page:
Sustainability asks us to live and work in a way that allows our children and future generations to flourish. How do we know if we’re doing the right thing? The Natural Step provides a framework for understanding sustainability which can be used as a guide for short and long term decision making.
The Natural Step is a global not-for-profit advisory and education organization dedicated to sustainable development. It gives decision-makers a shared, science-based understanding of sustainability and a unifying framework for moving towards sustainability.
(quoted from SWF Sustainability Speaker Series post)
You can RSVP for this event by contacting Jeremy Solly at jeremy@southwaterfront.com or calling 503.222.7788.
One of the gazillion things I love about Portland is the access to affordable and eclectic opportunities to both watch and participate in the performing arts scene. For the moment however, I am going to focus on music.
Being a small business owner with an early bedtime, I don’t get out much these days. But sometimes great music will come and find you. Several months ago I met Marie Schumacher at CubeSpace’s monthly nonprofit networking event. Marie and I got together over coffee so that she could pick my brain about consulting and her organization PDX Vox. As a thank you, she sent me a copy of her CD Sometimes at Night, which was some of the best new music I had heard in months (if not years).
Fast forward to now. After many, many months, Marie sent me an email about an upcoming gig on June 1st at 1pm in the afternoon at Springbox Gallery, 2375 NW Thurman St., Portland. Yes, this is a show that is business-owner and parent friendly. How cool is that!??!?!?!? And with a suggested donation of $5-$10, it is cheap to boot. That alone is cause for some serious celebration.
But wait, there’s more. Portland also has a great new resource to find new music, with an emphasis on the homegrown stuff from the Pacific Northwest. When OPB shifted their on-air music programming to an online music page, that opened up a whole new world for those of us who didn’t stay up late enough to listen to David Christensen’s music show Ecleticity. Now we can access streaming music and well as download studio performances and check out playlists and all sorts of fun stuff.
I still don’t sit still long enough to listen to as much music as I would like, but I am enjoying these new opportunities nonetheless and invite you all to join me.
You’d think that two women carrying around well-hatted babies and unfinished, knitted socks — and obsessively taking photos of them, and each other — would cause discomfort, if not outright consternation. But when Larissa and I participated in the Yarn Harlot’s ‘Inexplicable Knitting Behavior Scavenger Hunt‘ we were not once turned down for an extremely strange photo. We were welcomed with (largely) open arms and several eager smiles. And of course, some great one-liners. Such as:
- “This is not the first time I have held The Yarn today” — Pioneer Square snack vendor
- “I used to knit. When I was a logger. It was either that, or drink.” — Jimmy, who’s on his fourth step of NA, on the #75
- “Whose turn is it again?” — Office of Neighborhood Involvement receptionist, upon being presented with a sock (”held by a City Hall employee”)
- “Are you going to BUY it?” — Voodoo Doughnuts employee, when asked if he could ice “SOCK” on a Cock-n-balls doughnut. We did.
- “Did you take your photo with the windup toys, too?” — Leo, who runs the windup toys station at Finnegan’s, and was worried we might miss out on points. Leo is the best windup toy station employee EVER.
- “And she was handicapped!” — enthusiastic fellow knitter at the World Forestry Center, explaining why Larissa and I should have won prizes for our 5th- or 6th-place point totals, given we did the whole thing with babies and on the bus.
The thing is: in Portland, strange behavior is commonplace, encouraged, even. That the city can open itself to the possibility that strangeness might actually be worthwhile: that’s awesome.
I love Portland because it attracts top notch world class musicians like Zakir Hussain. Zakir is revered as the best tabla player in the world and India’s music ambassador. He is also the son of Alla Rakha, a respected tabla player who played with Ravi Shankar in the 1960’s.
The performance was at the magnificent Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. We sat about 10 rows back from the stage; the short distance provided very intimate glimpses of drummers’ hands flying away to Indian and world fusion grooves.
Afterwards, my family and I got to share some sweet moments talking with Zakir. That’s the beauty of this hometown venue; security is not absurd and leaves room for human interaction.
Hands down, it was one of the best concerts I have ever seen and I look forward to his next tour through Portland. Zakir has played here every year, and like the turning of the seasons, his return is guaranteed.
I encourage all to catch his performance next spring and look forward to being transformed by his Indian rhythms once more.
This coming Saturday (the 26th) is the third anniversary of a bunch of Portland Flickr users getting together. Instead of having a single group meetup, a bunch of folks from the pdx Flickr group are gathering at various spots throughout the city to take some photos and have some fun.
The plans are still being finalized, but several meeting points and times are already in the works, from sunrise at Pittock Mansion to sunset near the St. Johns Bridge. All of the information and planning can be found at this Flickr discussion thread. With the range of times and locations, I hope that everyone who loves to photograph Portland can participate in some way in what should be an awesome day of photography.
image by Flickr user Whateverthing, used under a Creative Commons license
Oregon has more nonprofits per capita than any other state in the union and the bulk of those are located in Portland. In some ways this is a really good thing. When Robert Putnam was writing Bowling Alone he bet a steak dinner that the phenonema was nation-wide. He lost. He lost because of Portland. We are a city that is socially and civilly engaged.
Oregon is not a wealthy state and all of the nonprofits struggle to stay afloat financially. But Portland’s nonprofit community is small and tight and very collaborative. I see this time and time again through CNRG’s monthly nonprofit networking and free training events at CubeSpace, through the Nonprofit Continuum Conference and through events like the one I attended last night coordinated by Carole Zoom.
Carole Zoom is trying to support the nonprofit community (and herself) by coordinating an efforts to help Portland nonprofits buy a building of their own. This is something she did while living in Eugene and now that she lives in Portland, she wants to duplicate it here. Last night was the initial meeting for this effort and she expected about 20 people. I stopped counting when we got to 60.
Not all of the organizations that were in that room are in a place to participate in the purchasing of a building. Some are not ready financially, some are not ready organizationally. But, when we broke into small groups to discuss what could happen if organizations could make mortgage rather than rent payments, there was a incredible transformation that took place. Every group that reported back talked about the synergy that came from those small, short conversations. Groups that had never spoken suddenly started brainstorming ways to work together to achieve their mission, serve their target populations and generally be creative in the face of great needs and minimal budgets. That is why Portland is Awesome.
Do you think Portlanders like to ride bicycles? That’s a rhetorical question. Of course we do! The Springwater Corridor running along the east riverbank and then east through Johnson Creek is one of the best paved foot and pedal paths I’ve seen anywhere. If you like off-road, in Forest Park is the eleven-mile long Leif Erikson Drive, a wide dirt and gravel swath that had originally been cleared for a earlier twentieth-century housing development (that fortunately fell through).
Then there are the organizations and online sites! The center of the online universe for Portland bicycling is BikePortland.org, a site which the founder, Jonathan Maus, dedicates himself to full-time. That’s where I get all of the latest news covering legislation, new bike rules, accidents, and anything else related to this greenest of all travel modes. There are also awesome (yes, they deserve that hype) organized bike trips throughout the year. A relatively new organization, ORBike, runs bike events such as the Portland Century, the Worst Day of the Year Ride and Bike to the Future. I volunteered to post signs on the Century last summer and then rode the quarter century (wish I had done the half century because the rest stops were stocked with goodies like fresh, prepared in front of you, strawberry shortcake, energy bars, fruit and lots of water). The best part of the ride was the people — everyone so friendly and accommodating. At the finish line, in the North Park Blocks at PSU, was a gourmet wild salmon dinner and local micro-brews waiting. I was in heaven! The most surprising part: I left my bike unlocked along with hundreds of others and out of sight for well over an hour and I had nothing to worry about. I would never ever have done that in Boston (my old home).
I can’t write about bicycling in Portland without mentioning the Bike Boxes. We lost a couple of bicyclists over the past year in accidents where they were hit by a truck turning right into them. One of the city’s responses was to create several bike boxes with the intent of giving bicyclists a safe haven in front of stopped traffic at lights. Our city government really appears to care about cyclists. This isn’t an endorsement in any way but one of the leading candidates for Mayor, Sam Adams, is in fact an avid bicyclist and advocate.
I live in the hills overlooking Cedar Mill, west of Skyline and it’s not an easy place to embark from on a bike trip. We will take our bikes down to Sauvie Island or to the East Esplanade to get some level riding in. Someday I hope I’ll be able to ride to work without worrying about manic rush-hour drivers. In Portland, I have hope for such a future.
When I first saw the links, I couldn’t image why people were hunting for butts, but get your mind out of the gutter! This has nothing to do with the body part that we each carry around of various shapes. This is about cigarette butts! It isn’t even about an anti-smoking campaign. The Portland Butt Hunt is about reducing the litter associated with cigarette butts.
What is the Portland Butt Hunt?
On Saturday April 19, the Leadership Portland class of 2008 invites you to join us in the first Portland Butt Hunt. We have partnered with SOLV to incorporate the Butt Hunt into their annual SOLV IT Earth Day initiative – one of the largest Earth Day projects in the nation. Our objective will be to clean up the butts around downtown Portland. Mark your calendars, sign up, and join us for the hunt!
We encourage smokers and non-smokers to join the butt hunt. This is not an anti-smoking initiative, it is an anti-litter initiative. It is important to have smokers on our team.
Some ButtHunt details: We will meet at Pioneer Square (by Starbucks) at 9am on 4/19. Gloves and garbage bags will be provided. Suggested routes will be coordinated and assigned.
Quoted from the Butt Hunt Portland site
I hate to see the sidewalks littered with butts. I was once a smoker (in college), but I was never a litterer. I was one of those who would put it out on the sidewalk, and stuff the butts in my pocket until I could find a trash can. This is a great cause, and I encourage people to get out and support it.