My Spot on the Strip

Acme Coffee

1431 SE 40th

Portland

The crazy thing about coming back to Portland is how much the place is evolving. Every time I touch down at my beloved PDX (best airport in the world, I'm sayin') and sniff the sweetness of the air up there, I get this crazy feeling that I have to see everything. Now. Otherwise I could lose the Portland pulse and not be hip to the game anymore, and that would cause me to freak out.

Take for instance, Hawthorne. SE Hawthorne has always been the street you take your out-of-towner friends to in order to show them what makes Portland different. Crunchy hemp gift stores, used clothing purveyors and of course, the Arabian Nights style Baghdad Theater.

I was tooling down the strip yesterday morning waiting for Biasi to shake the hangover and be ready to bake surprise birthday cakes with me when I ran into the newest cat to make the scene, Ken Sellens.

Ken just moved down from Bainbridge Island, which is a lovely, closeknit community a ferry ride from Seattle. We drank our morning joe and chatted for awhile about staying in the same crazy woman's guest house in Lagos, Portugal, the one where the door never worked and she woke you up at six am to ask whether you'd want the room for another night.

This summer, him and a buddy decided they wanted to open up "a coffee cart" to supplement their artist's incomes and the very next day found an ad on Craig's List for a cafe for rent.

Enter Acme Coffee, which they've set up in an old house just north of Hawthorne on SE 40th. It kinda reminds me of some of the outdoor cafes they have in Austin, Texas where there's big gardens with all kinds of mismatched seating and the general sense that beautiful, artistically genius work is getting accomplished at the tables all around you.

The place is full of functional antiques, like a massive iron fan that they've only turned on once because "it gets pretty intense out here" when it's on. They have blueberry pie.

"We have barbeques out here once a week," Ken tells me. "We close up the cafe, and this just turns into a house. As you know, there's a lot of musicians in this neighborhood, so people come up and play on the porch. This place turns into party central. Well, not really party central."

I want to go to one of these parties. Bad. But I'm doing the SF thing now, and I know that though I'm giving up my spot in P-Town, I'm leaving a vacancy that cool kids like Ken can fill, get their swing at the bikey-coffee-front porch-guitar strumming glory of it all.

I'll always be back to Portland. Even when I can't tell you where the cool bars are anymore. Even when snotty-nosed hipsters tell me and Lauren to move our place at Colonel Sommers Park because "we have a kickball game here. Every Monday. Did you just move here?" I'll still have the wearwithall to turn on my coolkid sneer and ask "where are you from? Ohio?" (nothing against Ohio)

Tear. Growing up. Oh my City of Roses, don't forget your girl!

And I love,

CD

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