Also known as PDX, Stumptown, Bridge City, and the City of Roses, Portland started out as a nasty little frontier town full of whores, sailors, gold-rushers, boozers, and crooks. Now it is mostly full of cartoonists, restaurateurs, booksellers, and musicians, which works out pretty well if you're visiting. Here's a list of some of my favorite things. For a comprehensive overview, try the Zinester's Guide!

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Food & Drink :: Retail :: Day :: Night
Gorgeous, warm, candle-lit atmosphere...excellent cocktails ranging from classic to quirky (try the Going Up), a great Happy Hour menu, tasty blackened chicken, a kind of inexplicably good mezza platter, and a crisp Caesar salad; all this in a former hotel of ill-repute. Goddamn, I love this town. Even my girlfriend - who doesn't drink liquor and says that their wine list is "meh"- loves the Sapphire.
I tell everybody that Pok Pok (and its attached Whiskey Soda Lounge) is my restaurant girlfriend. We've been going steady now for years. The gorgeous food is all inspired or directly taken from South Asian street food. Order the mussel crepes, the root salad, a roasted game hen, and the catfish. Wash it down with a whiskey flight. Get there early or put your name on the list and wander over to the Matchbox Lounge for an appetizer!
Are you ready for the most Portland-y sentence you will read here all day? "Bamboo Sushi is the only first certified sustainable, green sushi restaurant in America." Moving beyond that: fricking yum. Order the house special rolls and sit at the sushi bar. If you are not dreaming about it for the next three days, and if you do not find the boys behind the counter charming and knowledgeable, well, heck.
Have you heard of the bacon-maple bar? The cock 'n balls? The Cap'n Crunch donut? The Ol'Dirty Bastard (it involves crushed Oreos and peanut butter)? Are you prepared for a tattooed bass player to hand you a delicious heart attack in a bag? Yes, I thought you were. Now there are two branches of Voodoo, and the one on the Eastside, while it does NOT offer wedding ceremonies officiated by an Elvis impersonator, has more seating.
The bestest dessert place in town, oh golly. Everything from tiny perfect cookies to fine chocolates to ice cream to ridiculously twee creations involving meringue, gold leaf, and creme brulee. I recommend the Amelie, the Shazam, anything involving salt and caramel, the Pixie, and the Queen of Sheba. They also serve great lambics, sodas, and Belgian beers. OM NOM NOM NOM NOM PIX.
Attached to the quirky and inventive brunch establishment Bread & Ink, the Waffle Window is not just a window out of which a nice person hands you a perfectly caramelized and obscenely cheap Belgian waffle with, say, melted brie and fresh basil on it, or, oh, apple pie filling and caramel sauce. No, it is a window into a better world.


Portland is a brunch lover's town - Screen Door (!!), Tin Shed, Pine State Biscuits, Petit Provence...almost anywhere in the SE or NE.
Located in the park blocks of western downtown, the Farmer's Market is full of wonderful, wonderful things. Things made of food, or things shortly about to become food. It is beautiful, and always a good deal no matter what the weather looks like. Buy everything you need for a meal (obscure local mushroom varietals? Yes!) or just buy a meal and eat it right the hell there. Warning: there will be handsome dogs, attractive children, and vegan pastries (against all logic, completely delicious.)
My favorite local cafe, is the Albina Press - a fine roastery, prided for their mad barista skills, and devotees of the French press. They are also NOT too hip for their own pants, especially at the Hawthorne branch, which is airy and calm and friendly.
Other great cafes include: Opposable Thumb, Backspace, the Daily Cafe (all have good food), Fireside Coffee Lodge (endearingly weird kitsch), Stumptown (roastery mecca!), and Grand Central Bakery (oh god the pastries!).
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Powell's Books is REQUIRED. Trust me: REQUIRED. If I find out that you have not gone, I am sorry; we cannot be friends. It looks pretty modest from the exterior, until you realize that it takes up the entire block. With books. Used and new are shelved together, so you frequently get your pick of editions. The Hawthorne branch is also a great store, and in any other city it would be considered some kind of amazing independent bookselling flagship.
Portland is blessed with a number of great comics stores. Cosmic Monkey is on the Eastside of town and boasts one of the biggest and best selections in town, and regularly hosts major events like 24 Hour Comics Day. Floating World is in Old Town, and fits the bill of lovely boutique indie comics shop and gallery. Proprietor Jason picks only the best and the little reading room in back has cozy signings and original art as well as tons of zines.
 A Portland institution, Reading Frenzy is home to every zine, lovingly produced indie periodical, minicomic, print, or other suitably cool collateral imaginable. It even shares block space with the Independent Publishing Resource Center (upstairs) and CounterMedia, which is chock-full of art books, comics, and the world's most endearing room of smot and erotica books.
There are plenty of chain art supply stores in Portland. There is only one Muse, and that is just fine. A neat-as-a-pin little storefront in the SE serves up everything from house-sized canvasses to cartooning supplies to origami paper, and the owners and staff are all sardonic artists devoted to the local scene. Lots of neat little blank books, strange supplies to tempt even the un-artistic, and gifts for kids. They love special orders and put up with cartoonists all the time, and deserve your business!
A perfect example of the sort of off-kilter boutique that spangles the city, Noun ("A Person's Place for Things"...get it?) is basically the owner's love song to neat things in Portland. The stock is constantly in flux, and it ranges from hand-crafted jewelry to antique typewriter keys to weird lamps to strange plates and medical textbooks and oh god just go, it's lovely. Prices range from fifty cents to fifty bucks, and there's a boutique cupcake counter in back!
If you have feet or hands and you enjoy being comfortable and/or stylish, Sock Dreams will be very enjoyable. The retail front for one of the most glorious retail sites on the internet features the Best Of from their stock (and if you ask nicely they'll even pull stuff from the back room that they don't sell up front). Knee socks, stripey socks, gloves, arm warmers, argyle, acrylic, toe socks, you WILL end up spending more money on socks than you ever thought possible, and you will be happy about it.
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This sounds like something you'd take your grandmother to: a twee little walled Chinese garden with attached teahouse in the middle of downtown Portland. While that is true, I have never taken my grandmother there, and I still love the place. You will find yourself willingly investing minutes on end in carp-watching, identifying strange lilies, and learning about lacquered furniture. And then you will go to that teahouse and have some kind of really great tea. Somehow, it is even better when it rains.
Portland's premiere life-drawing and art instruction studio! Under the watchful eye of proprietor Jeff Burke, affordably-priced classes and modeling sessions of all stripes happen throughout the week. Whether you're looking to drop in on a general modeling session, a twelve-hour marathon, or get your ass kicked in an ongoing class, Hipbone is a wonderful and supportive place to go.
The MCC is Portland's quirkiest and frequently most enjoyable contemporary art place. I will use this anecdote: at their big opening show, there was a ballgown made entirely of zippers, a giant installation of over a thousand lipsticks painstakingly carved into sculptural shapes, wallpaper patterned in human blood, bowls made of melted plastic toy soldiers, an illusionary Persian carpet made of pen-caps, a castle made of combs, and some really nice traditional pottery.
PAM gives its bigger museum siblings a good challenge. In this modest but flexible little art mansion you will definitely find your money's worth (even if the admission seems a little steep on first glance). Rotating exhibits range from the weird-conceptual to the ancient-historical, and their lunchtime exhibit talks are a little spot of wonderful.
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Third Rail Rep is kind of fucked up, and that is totally a compliment. They try to produce only completely evil theater, by which I mean the characters don't have a very good time of it, but the crew and the audience have a ball. Regional theater companies are frequently overblown and have to recruit outside acting talent. Third Rail is trim, wicked, and Portland to the bone.
Portland is home to a ton of movie house pubs - where you can buy a slice of pizza, a pint of (good) beer, and watch a 2nd-run movie for $3 on a marquee screen in a building that's been doing this business since the Great Depression. Why the rest of the world hasn't caught on to this brilliance is a mystery. Poshest: the Academy. Most prominent: Bagdad. Cheapest: Laurelhurst. Funkiest: Clinton St. Nerdiest: Cinema 21.
If you want to catch a live show in town, the Aladdin is one of the few venues that's pleasant enough all on its own that you could pretty much show up on any given night and have a good time. If a performer I even faintly like is playing there, TICKETS AHOY. The usual beer, wine, and slices of pizza are available for in-seat eating, and the space is kooky and intimate and encourages performers to goof off.
Would you like to visit a place with dozens and dozens of arcade games from the last 30 years? With a bar attached? Yes, I thought you might. That is Ground Kontrol, and they even clean the floors.
Where else but Portland would an anarchic night of gallery openings spawn a MORE anarchic night of gallery openings? Well, okay, and fire-eating. Both Thursdays offer plenty of art and craft things to see, purchase, and nibble on. First Thursday is in the Pearl District and is a bit more upscale/"professional"; Last Thursday is in the Alberta Neighborhood and is even wackier. Thing SoHo versus Burning Man. Both are fun, and during the warm weather there's partying in the streets.
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