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Published: April 10th 2012
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Ace Lobby
As much a coffee house as a hotel lobby, and the perfect Portland hangout. Today, I soaked up
Portland culture.
Portland feels like an environmentally conscious
college town on a grand scale.
This has both good and bad points.
Portland is a great place to just hang out, drink
good coffee or
better beer, and relax.
Portland also seems to attract people for whom doing anything else seems too difficult to handle.
My hotel is the perfect introduction.
Most hotel lobbies are empty.
The Ace lobby was filled with people, drinking
coffee and working on laptops.
Since I had a conference to prepare for (more on that later), the vibe pulled me in.
Before I knew what happened, hours were gone 😊
Downtown Portland
I spent most of the rest of the day wandering through downtown Portland.
Architecturally, this is an old city.
Unlike Detroit, where it happened by accident (see
Children of the Night, Step Into the Light), here it is the product of a vigorous
historic protection movement.
Portland does have new buildings, but many of them are ugly glass boxes.
Portland’s famous
environmental consciousness shows through in many ways.
Newer buildings have roofs covered in windmills.
Every street corner has a multi-level
recycling container next to
Animal Fountain
One of Portland's Animal Fountains. This one is located one block east of Pioneer Square downtown. (and occasionally instead of) the usual trash can.
Unlike some I’ve seen elsewhere, people actually seem to use them!
My lunch and drink were served in paper containers.
The city council voted to
ban plastic bags while I was in town.
Finally, about three decades ago the city
tore down a freeway along the Willamette River and turned the space into a park.
It was a nice place for a stroll.
Portland Public Art
The other notable features are the public fountains and public art.
Portland streets are covered in
public drinking fountains.
Some of them are clever, such as a trough with a stature of a bear looking at a fish.
Some double as public statues, such as one of an elk erected by former mayor David Thomson in 1900.
The rest look exactly like the type of drinking fountain found in a public park, except that they run all the time.
Most of them were
built in the early 1900s by early timber baron
Simon Benson in an attempt to wean residents from their favorite drink, beer (some things never change).
Public art is everywhere downtown.
Most of it is statues of one form or another.
City Reflections
Public art by Patti Warashina, just one of many works in downtown Portland A typical example is City Reflections by
Patti Warashina, a statue of a harlequin and dog painted black and gold.
Others look like underground work, such as a former bus shelter filed with streamers.
I had dinner tonight at a bar recommended by the front desk person at my hotel,
Cassidy's.
Given all the microbrew flowing through this town, Portland is one of the rare places where getting a BAD beer takes effort.
I could have had beer anywhere.
Cassidy’s stands above the crowd due to its food, which is really good and served late.
They make highly creative burgers that are some of the best
bar snacks on earth.
I accompanied mine with a few servings of really obscure beer.
If this is what life is like in Portland, I never want to leave!
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