The Mission District

So we're kind of cruising along, me and America. Everyone's out of work, everyone's living in their parents' bedrooms, everyone's going to happy hour and skipping Friday night. No idea when this whole 'recession' thing is going to end. Peter Donohue, economist extraordinaire, tells me it's getting worse before it gets any better. Things are a little... up in the air, you might say.

Erik and I spent today with Caleb, his eight-year old be-mohawked cousin, cruising the Mission District 'cuz we had nothin' better goin' on. So for those of you that don't live in San Francisco (I know you're out there), the Mission is where you want to be. And what I mean to say by that is, it's where Caitlin wants to be.

The neighborhood was first settled by Whitey back in 1776, when the Spainards came to town(they built San Francisco de Assi, after which the neighborhood was named). It morphed into a blue collar community with the gradual addition of the German and Irish who Gold Rushed over from the motherlands. It even benifited from Central Americans workers, who moved in after finishing out their terms with Californian companies building the Panama Canal down south. The 'hood has always had a card up it's sleeve because when the rest of the city is lost in fog, it will sometimes poke it's head through into a sunny spot.

Today, the Mission rocks. By the 1950's, Chicanos and other Latinos had become the area's predominant ethnic group, blessing us with a taqueria on every corner and organic mangos four for a buck up in the grocery stores, even the year of our lord 2009. And other, Caitlin-friendly species have become endemic as well, such as the urban hipster. You wouldn't believe the bike shops down here- oh, the colored frames, oh, the wheel walls.

I actually feel compelled to give you my top 5 Mission District hit parade.

1. Paxton Gate, 824 Valencia Street
a taxidermy/florist shop brought to you by the most florid, twisted, pretty fever dreams. Sample goods include a stuffed cat wearing a prom dress and caniverous plants, both ready to be taken home and become your best friend! They just opened up a kid's store down the block, heady.

2. 826 Valencia Street, 826 Valencia Street
author Dave Eggers (he of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the best titled book ever), has created this string of kid's writing workshops across the country. They all have business fronts to raise money for the childrens. 826 Valencia is a pirate shop. If you go, you must dig on the small theater whose screen has been filled by a big old fish tank. Original stories about the tank's inhabitants have been framed on the wall and I like them.

3. Amnesia Bar, 853 Valencia Street
lots of obscure beers, free bluegrass Mondays. Stand near the front so you can see the barefoot, hillbilly dancers get down.

4. the Precita Eyes Mural Project, here there and everywhere
around the Mission, you'll find narrow alleyways covered street to street with bursts of hot art that make late night bar cruisers stop and stare. Precita Eyes gives kids and other Missionites the power to make their neighborhood colorful, and the resulting wall coverings give us all reason to be proud.

5. Mariachi's, 508 Valencia Street
this taqueria on Valencia Street beat out Thrift Town, the mega-used clothing store not only on the basis of it's delicious Mazatlan fish burrito but also because all their bottled beer is the same price. Bud Light? $2.99. Pacifico? $2.99. Anchor Steam? $2.99. Only in San Francisco...

So... how did I get on that track? Oh yeah, being broke and stuff. Well, if I had a job, I wouldn't have had the time to bomb around down here and formulate a top 5 hit parade for you all. I wouldn't be in this awesome coffee shop with Erik and Caleb drinking beers in the middle of the day and enjoying the freaks and hippies wandering by the plate glass windows. I guess the main thing is the uncertainty involved in not having a gig to fill your time. A grid on which to plan your day.

But seriously when did I, she of the ever diminishing bank balance, get uncomfortable with unemployment? Since when was the freedom to wander a bad thing?

Silver lining not so hard to find here,

Love,

Cait

Pretending to Drink Illegally

Bourbon and Branch
501 Jones St, San Francisco, CA

So speaking of poor property retention skills, I've gone and lost my driver's license. Shocking.

Last night we were out on the town with the Anderson/Shea clan and I had to pull some fast ones not to slow up the show. You know, bat the eyelashes, talk real fast and swish through the bar door before the bouncer knows what hit him. Bonus points if I mention I'm from Oregon!

In light of my situation's illegalities, I suppose it was only right that we wound up at a speakeasy. Back in the 1920's, Prohibition San Francisco was a den of inequity, and one of the old haunts where the Bay came to play has been converted back to it's roots, into a swish downtown night spot on the corner of Jones and O'Farrell named Bourbon & Branch. "Speak-easy," for those of you keeping track, was bartenders' admonition to indiscreet boozers. Keep it under your hat bro, on the down low.

Us being new to town, we thought we were slick for finding out about the place. There was a odd swarm of police at the Jones Street entrance when we rocked up, but we were quietly informed that "the Library" was at the back.

We dropped the secret password (shhhh, it's "books") and stepped out into the coolest room ever. Bourbon and Branch looks like how I envision my life to be when I'm buying vintage clothes. There's red velvet patterned wallpaper, the ceilings are shiny stamped metal, all the bartenders (men) are wearing bowler hats and shaking drinks into highball glasses. The Library (which is just one of the bar's rooms, the most "selective" I guess) walls are lined with bookshelves that every once in awhile will swing open and become doors to other rooms, which have secret doors to other rooms themselves, each lovingly attended by an appropriately retro employee.

Cocktails were of the old-fashioned persuasion, gimlets and ginger beer. Looking lovely but at $11, you know I didn't try a single one, current financial situations being a bitch to launch a food and drink writing career on. But it's all good, because I had my first Anchor Steams since coming back to the Bay ($5). Also joining us was Delirium Tremens, a Belgium beer which is my all time favorite based purely on it's name and label ($10):

Pink elephants! Strutting crocs! Only in Ghent...

B & B rocks, in a totally hidden, underground way. Kind of. It's hard to suspend your belief in the conceit after viewing the bar's website, where the "secret" password is prominently displayed alongside hokey 'House Rules.' Aw, applesauce!

But gimmick though it may be, it's a gimmick done well. The Library was packed, but a cute redheaded bar runner took pity on our boothless state and escorted us through some secret passages to another, nearly empty room where we chilled on red velvet love seats and spied on Jones Street degenerates and millionaires and millionaire degenerates through peepholes in the thick wooden doors. The music is Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald style jams of the highest order and at a certain point when we were sitting there, Andrew pulled up suddenly on the latch of a hidden trap door that had probably been there since the heydays of our grandparents.

I'll be back. Next time I'm wearing a dress. And bringing my date a fedora. And maybe eleven dollars.

No Jive,

Caitlin

San Francisco

"Do you know San Francisco?" The crackhead had trapped Erik and I in our MUNI seats, forced by politeness and morbid curiousity to listen to a twenty minute monologue surrounding the topics of cocaine, adultery and how awful he found the music of Johnny Cash.

I'd say the answer is up for debate. Do I know San Francisco?

Well, I know a lot about Jefferson Elementary School in the Sunset neighborhood where I spent my days of innocence and kickball. I know a bunch about the playgrounds in Golden Gate Park and the famous wooden bridge at the Japanese Tea Gardens, it's arch so steep that steps and handholds are built into it so accident-prone tourists and small children don't tumble into the stream below. I know what it's like at Ocean Beach when it's foggy and cold (which is to say, always), but you want to feel the waves so bad you splash into them anyways, winter coat and parents' yelps and all.

the Sunset, at Sunset. You didn't really want to see what it

looks like, did you?

I know about the Cliff House and how it used to have the penny arcade where frightening mechanical gypsies will tell your fortune for a coin. I know about Louie's, the diner overlooking the Sutro Baths that has the best minestrone soup this side of anywhere. I know about which bookstores have sufficient kid's sections and I know about the Chinese New Year's parade and I know about dim sum and Ethiopian food and baklava.

People ask me where I'm from, and I guess this is one of the possible answers, I mean it's where I spent my childhood. But what about where I was born? (Austin) What about where I came of age? (holla, City of Roses!) It's a tough call.

Yesterday I was walking down Van Ness, just out of a successful meet and greet with some people in the know and I felt city and it felt good to be on my way to coffee shop on Polk Street and then off to North Beach for happy hour with friends. Like, now I'm getting somewhere. And I know this.

But I don't know some things and they're kind of a big deal. I don't know the cheapest bars. I don't know the good yoga studios. I don't know the bus routes. I don't know how to find a job. I don't know who's looking for a room mate. I have no idea how I'm gonna pay rent in this city, one of the most expensive places to live in the world. And nope, not a clue on how I'm gonna get my bike up all these friggin' hills.

So I didn't really know how to answer our fine, stimulated friend. Do I know San Francisco... like, have we met or are we intimate? I opened my mouth to start prattling on in navel-gazey kind of way.

Gotta be quick on the uptake with these guys.

"I mean, like, you know Pill Corner? Down by the Civic Center. Where you can buy all them pills. Man, they be getting shot out there, man! Man, the otherdayIwasoverthereandtherewasthisonedude..."

The show went on. And we got to see his prison tattoos, super sick.

So do I know San Francisco? Can I get back to you on that one? I'll have in answer for you in a couple months.

Respectfully Yours,

Ms. Caitlin Byrd Donohue (Big Shot of Tomorrow)

Oregon

And so it goes. A mad dash (or so it felt) through that Oregon, over and done. Certainly, it was not without it's memories. Surprising no one, I've lost my camera again, so the photos that follow are all borrowed shots and throwbacks. Highlights of the life in the green:

1. My 'welcome home' backyard barbeque- a week before I left again. A gentle outside, fed drunkeness with friends that begin to turn into family.

Similar happenings in 2007. Meghann Miller: she's got hot gams and the cutest blog ever

2. Monday night in Colonel Summers Park on 20th and Belmont drinking those new Session Blacks (watch out for them- and I mean that in every sense of the world) on short grass with Sunny and my lovely bearded boy. It was near enough to overwhelm a girl with the nouveau-Portland of it all. Phalanxs of double-decker art bikes, ironic grandma/hillbilly outfits and pet ferrets- a true hipster parade. Where do these people come from? (Answer: Iowa. And Beaverton.)

3. A rapturous, bittersweet road trip with Erik bound in a circuitous route to Cali, with stops at strange metal sculpture shops in McKenzie and at Sahalie Falls in the Willamette National Forest. If the United States has one thing to be bullishly, opaquely proud of, it can be it's national park system. Not only were we the first to designate national parks, with the incorporation of Yellowstone Park in 1872, but in no other country in the world can senior citizens pull their trailer into a parking lot right off the highway and stroll 100 meters to this. Bravo, leaders of the free world:

Clearly, I did not take this picture. But I'm thankful to those who don't have the same issue with property retention. Thanks, Michael Hatten!

4. We made another stop off in the crunchy enclave of Eugene, for my first "peer group" wedding. If it had to be somebody joining that crazy institution called marriage, at least it was Dain and Wakan. They rock. Since we are big on the solemnities of the ritual of love, we bought Mr. and Mrs. Alferes a race car pinata from Woodburn and filled it with plastic dollar store swag, Mexican candies, peanuts and "nips." Felicidades, D and W. Your party actually left me less terrified of matrimony. And I dug the poi dancer that had his "fire stick" on a yo-yo. Eugene, Oregon: if you are going to hippie, hippie here.

Wakan had to grab a Tanqueray nip from a youngster shortly after we bashed her race car to festive, boozey bits

5. Rounding out the grown up panorama was a stop off in Bend to see Gena's new(ly purchased!) home. My little homeowner has set herself up grand in the land of dramatic mountains and lazy day tubing. The house is fab, but her primary accomplishment is the purchase of a fat orange cat with one eye. His name is Captain Uno. After she reads this she will send me a picture of him, preferably with his bowtie on.

Arrrrr! Thanks, Gen. You are a prize peach.

Oregon. The Beaver State. Stumptown, Tracktown, Nutrias, Craft Beers, Big Trees, Bigger Ideas. Hicks, Hippies and Hipsters. Your daughter will be back someday soon. Save some rain for me.

Flopping about in wipeout waves of adoration,
Caitlin

Dave Chapelle Comes to Portland

Portland, Dave Chappelle and Twitter. What do the three have in common? Well besides being cornerstone "Things White People Like," they are also how I spent my Tuesday night.

I should clarify that I am not yet cool enough to Twitter. The texts started hitting my backyard barbeque around nine, their pattern of arrival arranging my friends and I along a hipness ranking system. (Katelyn got two, and got hers first, for those of you who are keeping score) Midnight free show? Sick. Pioneer Square, Portland's living room? Nice. Dave Chappelle? I'm listening...

So like all good scenesters, we go, and I'm not shocked to find the Square packed to the gills in skaters, stoners and the rest of Portland's wacky twenty-something rainbow. There's people sitting on top of Starbucks, wedged up in high places. But there's no Dave Chappelle. There's also no sound system set up. Curious...

He turns up an hour late and we're stoked. But for a rabid audience of about 3,000, this



is what we had to hear him through. An adorable little amp on it's lonesome.

So what I ended up hearing, on his occasional forays to my side of the stage, was this:

"...the police want us to disperse..."

"...I thought I'd come through Portland..."

"...just want to make sure everyone is safe. Get home SAFE..."

I laughed like a hyena at every line. White people love Dave Chappelle.

Eventually three brave, pasty souls started stripping on the roof of the Starbucks. It was the entertainment highlight of the night. Even Dave was staring. It was something the entire crowd could share in:



For the record, the motives behind the "event" were cool. I guess Dave just posted up in front of Chipotle and 24 Fitness (corporate much, Dave?) and started telling randoms to come watch him tell jokes at Pioneer Square at midnight. He was totally event permitless and was shocked at the response, which indicates to me that he's been living under a rock for the past ten years.

Cause let's face it Dave. White people love you. And Twitter. Let us celebrate the age of "social media networking," shall we?

Celebrating you and yours,
CD

The 'I'm Not Posting' Post

This is a travel blog, I repeat to myself as I morosely stare at Pura Caitlin's stagnant screen. No one wants to hear about your naval gazing. Unless you're doing it in a rainforest with your life's possessions strapped to your back. Running from mosquitoes the size of pterodactyls. Or malicious Mayan spirits.



But what I have been doing is stridently awesome, if not as blog-friendly as the gypsy life. Namely, enjoying the summer in the company of those I love the most. Gena, that enterprising little devil with whom I've been besties since Sellwood Middle, '95, even initiated a little cross-blog documentation:



http://www.hungoverportland.com/2009/07/reader-submission-from-our-holiday-weekend.html



The digital universe has confirmed my existence! I drink sugary alcoholic beverages at one in the morning on holidays!



Oh, and you know what's cool? Knit graffiti. Renegade crocheting.




Dang P-Town, I think I love you...



Kissing you all over your Benson Bubbler,

C. Donohue

Home

That title should be followed up by one thousand exclamation marks because Portland, Oregon... oh Portland, Oregon. There is nothing like home, which you forget mightily when you are touring the globe because everywhere seems incredible, each new place an adventure mountain. But when you get home, I'm talking about home home, where every street is tagged with a memory and you run into your people at every gallery show, boat dock and hot dog stand- man, it doesn't get any better.


So I'm talking about Portland, just like the New York Times likes to do.

We took Sean's boat on a spin down the Willamette River yesterday, the strip of blue in the middle of my fair city. We ducked under the (still standing!) Sellwood Bridge and the Ross Island Bridge and just when we hit the Burnside Bridge we caught the strums of the Waterfront Blues Festival, the biggest one of it's ilk west of the Mississippi, so we anchored in with the rest of the lucky waterbound and hung out. Sunscreen, beers, heckling of the other boats... becoming one with the panorama.

Portland is the hippest city ever, ya dig? Like, we're reinventing the cool kid wheel out here. I like how the scenesters here are scruffybeautiful, like really pretty 1950's style dresses you dig out of the Bins (oh, you don't know the bins? You haven't truly lived til you've been up to your elbows in unwashed piles of societal cast offs in the Goodwill donation center. You pay for your stuff by the pound, people! And there I go talking about the bins again...).


I croozed First Thursday last night, yuppie downtown's excuse to get arty with it on a monthly basis. Me and a couple of dear friends walked through a parking garage to get to a sweaty staircase that took us to a sweatier artist's co-op on the top floor of the Everyday Music building on West Burnside. Talked to a "sweet and salty art folk" lady guitarist (holler Mindy! hope you're grooving on the blog), caught some coulda-been-colder drinks and prostrated ourselves on the hardwood floor. And you know, we're laughing...

And sweating like hell (humidity not being all that common in the land of the Perfect Summer) and rolling around on the wood being poor-as-hell rockstars. And I realized I have friends who know me and belong to me and that I'm not getting rid of, no matter how many times I take out that passport.

Which rocks,

Peace and Love,

CD