Archive for the 'portland is awesome' Category

Wanna change the world? Start at home.

Published
by
Eva
on June 4, 2008
in portland is awesome
. 1 Comment

Today I went to the Greenlight Greater Portland kick-off event and heard Richard Florida, author of Who’s Your City talk about what a great city Portland is.  Given the livability factors (greatest number of microbreweries, library with the largest circulation per capita, greatest number of bookstores, forest, mountains, coast and desert within easy driving distance) that should be no surprise to anyone.  But, he went on to talk about how important involvement in community is to people’s sense of well-being and how the high rate of community involvement in Portland is a huge factor in what makes Portland livable.

This is not news.  Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone bet a steak dinner that the social isolation and decline in social capital was a national phenomena.  He lost.  Portland was the one exception.

But we cannot rest on our laurels.  We all need to continue to participate in community and ensure that Portland continues to be the awesome place that we know and love.  Here are some upcoming opportunities:

The City Club of Portland is a 93 year old organization that relies on volunteer research efforts to affect public policy.  At their annual meeting on Friday, Steve Schell will be reflecting on City Club’s research in his talk “City Club Research: A Quiet Catalyst For Momentous Change.”

Another important effort is the Bureau of Planning’s update of the 1980 Comprehensive Plan and the 1988 Central City Plan. The Planning Bureau says: 

The Portland Plan is an inclusive, citywide effort to guide the physical, economic, social, cultural and environmental development of Portland over the next 30 years. The plan will build on the work the community did through visionPDX, which captured and fleshed out our shared values of sustainability, equity and accessibility, and community connectedness and distinctiveness.

There are two upcoming opportunities to participate in The Portland Plan as part of the Community Summits on Saturday, June 14th.

Portland is a town for great music

Published
by
Eva
on May 21, 2008
in culture, entertainment, events, northwest and portland is awesome
. 0 Comments

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.

Portland Bridges

Published
by
jimgoings
on May 8, 2008
in culture and portland is awesome
. 3 Comments

I’m a transplant from the LA area. There, I said it. But I moved here not because of a job, but rather I got a job so I could move here. One of the things about Portland that amazes me on a regular basis is just how small this town is and how connected we all are.

I’ve been working downtown for almost 8 years now and I bump into people I know all the time. A couple of weeks ago I went to lunch with a buddy of mine and we bumped into some old coworkers from a previous employer. We weren’t talking on the sidewalk for more than 5 minutes when another fellow walked up that knew everyone else but me! Next thing you know, everyone is catching up and reminiscing about old times.

I like to promote local business as much as I can, and at the very least, I try to always work with local representatives. As such, I often run into people that used to work for so-and-so and now work with so-and-so.

One particularly funny incident came up when we realized that a new vendor we were meeting was someone we actually had a bad experience with when they worked for a different vendor a few years earlier. Only we we all met face to face did it dawn on us! We thought “oh no, it’s that crazy vendor!” and he thought “oh no, it’s those crazy customers!” We worked everything out in the end, but it just goes to show that you just never know who you’re going to run into.

The thing is, this isn’t an occasional thing… it happens all the time to me.

And recently, Twitter has become the way folks in Portland are staying connected. For example, did you know that the Portland Police is on Twitter? Further, the officer that posts is one of the funniest and most informative folks I’ve read on twitter. I’ve never felt such a personal connection to the Police before. It sounds corny, but I’m glad that the Portland Police Bureau is savvy enough to use this new medium to stay connected with us.

Of course, there are many awesome Portland Blogs that help us stay in touch with each other.

The moral of working and living in Portland is clearly “Don’t burn your bridges!” Post a comment and let me know other ways Portland stays connected.

People who welcome inexplicable things

Published
by
sarah
on April 23, 2008
in entertainment, events and portland is awesome
. 4 Comments

inexplicable knitting

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.

Attorneys who love chickens

Published
by
sarah
on April 17, 2008
in Uncategorized, north portland and portland is awesome
. 3 Comments

It is a Sunday, and of course I am going to the Chicken Fest at Livingscape Nursery. I have volunteered to help, I am, after all, That Chicken Lady. It is early, and it is cold, and I wonder if maybe I am too early. There are no chicken banners. There are no chicken-y greeters. I wander around, a minute, finding all the lovely hens who have been loaned by local chicken people. I say their breeds to myself. Banded Rock. Ameraucana. Rhode Island Red. Australorp! Cochin.

I see someone who is wearing a chicken hat. Ahh, I’m not too early. When he stops buzzing about, I approach him.

“I’m Sarah Gilbert,” I say. He is wearing worn jeans and a yellow felt hat with a chicken, and looks like he hasn’t shaven for a day or two. Like the sort of person who would run a nursery focused on sustainability and native plantings. “Are you THE Sarah Gilbert?” he asks warmly. He seems vaguely familiar. “Of course you are!”

We know each other, he tells me, and I can’t place him. I blame the chicken hat. “I’m your patent attorney!” he says.

Steve Adamson is very probably my favorite attorney, ever. His patient and careful explanation of the patent and trademark process for one of the startups I worked for was key in developing my own geeky love for intellectual property. I think my boss was very, very slow in paying him, and Steve never got angry or sent me to collections. I find myself hoping that he was paid in full. I went on maternity leave with my second son before that had been wrapped up.

And now he’s here, on N. Vancouver Avenue just around the corner from Pix and SCRAP, running a nursery. Where they sell chickens! I bought two babies, an Ameraucana and a Columbia Wyandotte (”I saw a picture of this chicken and I knew we HAD to carry them!” Steve said excitedly.) They also have blueberries, and huckleberries, and all kinds of great plants and seeds. You should really go there for your baby chicks and your native grapes. And maybe if you are an IP geek too, you could kvetch with him about the state of the USPTO. That’s just the kind of place Portland is.

Portland is a town of “do-gooders”

Published
by
Eva
on April 17, 2008
in events and portland is awesome
. 1 Comment

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.

Portland is Bicycling and Bicycling is Portland

Published
by
pdxbob
on April 14, 2008
in culture, entertainment, events, outdoors and portland is awesome
. 1 Comment

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.

My life as a Portland Tart

Published
by
sharon
on April 14, 2008
in portland is awesome
. 0 Comments

Portland is indeed awesome.

I say this mostly because of the communities I have become a part of here. I’ve lived in various cities around the world throughout my life, and I’ve never felt more at home and more a sense of community than I do here in Portland.

Portland; the binding glaze over my communities

I am involved in several communities; my analogy is that each community is a luscious fruit, which is glazed with the heart of Portland, which in turn makes me the tart I am today.

But let’s look at the places I’ve lived besides Portland.

Places I’ve lived, in order:

  • Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Bellingham, WA
  • Denver, CO
  • Boulder, CO
  • Reservation near Flagstaff, AZ
  • Ashland, OR
  • Eugene, OR
  • Lancaster, PA
  • Portland, OR
  • Seattle, WA
  • Portishead, England
  • Whitefish, MT
  • Rhododendron, OR
  • Portland, OR

I’ve had amazing offers for wonderful career paths outside of Portland since moving back in 2003, but I just can’t seem to take them and move away; I feel like I have found home here in Portland within my various communities.

My Communities.

Many of my communities overlap, and each of them tend to have their own medium of communication or central place of interaction. I would consider myself a part of a few communities (in no particular order):

  • Geek
  • Jewish
  • High School Friends
  • Neighborhood
  • Gay

The geek community I feel is those who have geekishness in their lives and talk about social networking web applications or tech companies or new hardware products or Red Dwarf on British television.

I love hanging with my Heebs. As g-d is an important part of my live, as is my cultural heritage, it’s great have my Jewy friends beside me either drinking at a bar, dancing in a club, playing dodgeball, or at shul.

My high school friends are my close inner circle of friends, my main set of homies; I love them, their spouses, their kids. From backyard bbq’s to working on each other’s houses to being there for each other emotional on the roller coaster of life, these friends in our little community mean the world to me.

Even though I have only lived in the S.E. neighborhood where I bought my home for two years now, I feel really connected to this community; I care about the businesses here and the schools and the crime, and I endeavor to help create a positive difference. (Can I get a ‘what, what?!’ for multi-block garage sales?)

I try to stay connected to knowing what’s going on in the queer community by either hanging at Crush, or reading Byron Beck, or supporting the Cascade Aids Project or reading Just Out every now and then or going to the PDX Lesbian and Gay Film Fest. While the community is not an integral part of my life, and tends to overlap into other communities (PICA, music scene, etc.) being a lesbian is integral to who I am (hello ladies!) and so, I am connected to the community.

How are you Tart-ish?

Now, one could say ‘You could have all of those communities in any other city. I hear there are Jews in New York and gays in Philly!” Thanks for the incredible insight, Snarky McSnarkerston. But see, here’s the thing:

None of these communities would be what they are without being a part of my overall Portland community.

Each of my communities have the wonderful Portland feel to them - they are painted lightly with a warm Portland tone, like a glaze upon a tart. A glaze which binds everything together, holds each entity together as one and puts a shine on my whole life.

What are some of your communities in Portland? Are they replicable elsewhere or are they Portland specific?

Next week: why Portland strip clubs are like submarine sandwiches.

Why I’m Glad That Our Twitter Count Declined By 54% This Saturday

Published
by
Bram Pitoyo
on April 13, 2008
in culture, northwest, outdoors, portland is awesome and technology
. 2 Comments

This Saturday was, as we all know it, almost too gorgeous to be true. That afternoon, I went to sit in the Tanner Springs Park with a friend, doing my nonrequired reading, observing an eagle swooping down to catch a fish then fly back out behind the highrise (no, really) and seeing people generally enjoying themselves and soaking up the sun.

But, you see, I have a habit of refreshing Twitter’s website every time I connect to see if anyone posted an update. On a work day, I would usually refresh every 20 minutes or so, and see at least several updates from the regular Tweeters (you know who you are.) But quick observations showed that Friday was less eventful (I did less checking and found less updates), and Saturday was practically quiet

Almost too quiet. Heck, I didn’t miss anything by sitting at the park all afternoon, with one exception, of course.

So I checked out our leader board yesterday night and today, compared it, and saw that something was clearly afoot:


Notice that Portland’s ranking actually went down by two positions (from #12 to #14,) narrowly surpassed by Seattle and Toronto (cities that were below us on weekdays,) and its count declined by 54%. In comparison, Seattle was down by 42%, Toronto by 38% and other cities at the top five were down by an average of 20–30%.

Sure, we may postulate that this decline showed that we are very easily distracted by nice weathers, or that we aren’t as productive in the weekends when compared to other cities.

But that’s not what I believe.

I believe that this Saturday, we collectively went outside, enjoyed the day and slept early while not bothering with our constant Twitter updates.

And I believe that this decline showed that we have kept our priorities right. That we believe in the equal importance of hyper-connectivity and having real-life conversations. This decline showed that the much anticipated ‘Portland Creative/Tech Renaissance’ is going to be a different sort of movement. One where work and life are balanced and weekends reserved for having fun. This decline showed that Portland’s real edge will not necessarily lie in its technological or creative breakthrough, but in its humanity and genuine willingness to connect with others.

The decline in Tweet count this weekend may be what set us apart from other places. And that, if you ask me, is a good thing.

Need Bloggers for Portland is Awesome

Published
by
Dawn
on April 12, 2008
in portland is awesome
. 2 Comments

Do you love Portland and want to contribute to Portland is Awesome? If so, send me an email (geekygirldawn on gmail) with your desired username and a link to your existing blog. Assuming that your writing style is a good fit for Portland is Awesome, I will get your account set up and you can start contributing!