Portland, Oregon: Sensing a City’s Celebration of Life

by Leslie Loy

I don’t remember my first airplane ride into Portland—or if I got there by car. I do remember when I first smelled Portland: it was such an immediate sensorial reconnection with some inner part of my self. Portland smells green, it has a lushness to it. The very air invites me to sink my bare feet into the rich, temperate green grasses. I tried for days to describe how that luxuriant grass moved me. I knew it wasn’t about the color or the texture or the perfectly cooled air around it. Something had moved inside of me, catalyzed by the grass, and whatever that was lived freely in Portland. Later I would put it down to a cultural awakening: my European heritage melding with my American roots in a wonderful harmony.

Only snippets remain of that first visit: reading a book on a park bench while friends played Frisbee; munching on a giant bowl of cherries and blueberries; sitting still in the Japanese Garden, watching the trickle of water in its creek; marveling at the individualistic bridges spanning the Willamette River. I recall endless rows of books at Powell’s; like a child’s my hand had to touch every spine, and my nose tickled with the smell of ink on paper. I watched the sunset from a friend’s studio apartment in the Pearl district, cold marble floors beneath my feet and the ceiling-to-floor window searing the palms of my hands, as the sound of jazz floated up from a club down the street. I remember thinking, Portland is magical.

When I realized that I wanted to call Portland my adult home, it began to live inside me. I never thought a city could do that. In Portland each block seemed different from the one before it—elegant and crisp or hip and expressionistic or simple and solid. Portland articulated itself so freely, it did its own thing so openly. Unabashedly it showed its jewels and its wounds and I appreciated that honesty. I never thought a city could do that, either.

I arrived to stay in early August 2006 with my car packed with boxes, books, and pictures—and my mother and sister in tow. The air was surprisingly humid and thick. Fans were running, and the entire world had slowed down. The neighborhood I moved into had rolling hills for streets, lined with giant trees that cooled the sizzling sidewalks. Children ran outside, their skins turning shades of brown and red, playing softball, soccer, blowing bubbles, selling homemade cards and lemonade; it was idyllic.

I wandered at first in a haze of marvel. A moment stands out in my first week, when I went to a yarn store on Hawthorne and discovered that this dainty little shop had gorgeous spools of wool and cotton to sell, and coffee and beer. I think I literally clapped for joy: What kind of a city sells beer at its craft shops? And so the love began.

Mind you, I am not a big fan of beer. No, I loved the fact that here people were clearly not afraid to be themselves. They could admit both to being crafty and to enjoying a good brew and could take pleasure in such a combination. That spoke to a part of myself that begged to be expressed and to be safe in its expression. That moment was a seed—of knowledge and of self.

Portland is a smart city, both in intellectual competence and in general visioning capacities: before moving there, I learned that it was in the process of putting solar panels on low-income housing. Portland is filled with trees, ZipCars, buses, streetcars, train tracks, and bike lanes. It has long been a vibrant hub for the counter-culture which had been pushing the city since the 1970s to embrace the alternative and to thrive on it. Its indie music scene is as infamous as its roller derby; both thrive beside zine publishing and social activism.

I found myself bike-riding along river trails, visiting local farmers markets, taking the because it was easier, and delighting in the unexpected and the real. Sitting one night on the curb outside Ken’s Artisan Pizza off Pine in Southeast Portland, a glass of cool lemonade in my hand, I was admiring houses, clapboards with bright colors and wild gardens, when suddenly a man dressed in tuxedo and top hat rode by on a six-foot high bike. I chuckled and then laughed out loud at a woman riding behind the man dressed in miniskirt and fedora on a kid’s training bike.. So funny—and so real.

Or the birthday when I was riding in the elevator to the Portland City Grill, (spectacular cuisine, high atop one Portland’s tallest buildings). A tag on my lapel read, “Kiss Me, It’s My Birthday.” My friends had dressed me in a bright boa with bunny ears and I was grinning, no doubt, from ear to ear, when the elderly gentlemen across from me, who was dressed to the T, suddenly leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. Startled, I demanded to know what he was doing, but he chortled and replied, “It’s your birthday!” Portland is filled with unexpected surprises—even in elevators. Likewise, Portland But, more than that, the legends are not just histories, but are living stories or people who are part of the fundamental fabric of the city.

Yes, Portland is relatively new to the scene, but it has its legends. (People love the stories of captains who, to kidnap sailors, would get them drunk in bars, and then throw them into the city’s underground “Shanghai” tunnels.) Historically, the city’s birth on a quiet resting spot along the banks of the Willamette came about because of three men, one coin and a common vision. In the early 1840s, one William Overton decided to build a commercially-viable city at the junction of the Columbia and Willamette rivers. The natural resources of the area were astounding—fish, fur, wood, and rich green land—and he saw infinite potential. But Overton was flat broke, and so had to convince a Boston-based friend, Asa Lovejoy, to help him buy the land—all 640 acres of it. In the end, Overton’s contribution was a mere25 cents. Later, he sold his portion to a man named Francis Pennygrove in Portland, Maine. Pennygrove and Lovejoy couldn’t agree on what to name the city, so it was decided by a coin toss. Pennygrove won and he baptized the harbor town Portland after his hometown. It’s a good story, and it also sets a tone for the biography of Portland.

Portland appreciates life. As a result, life is everywhere. Early mornings from mid-March until late Fall, the rivers are dotted with crews of rowers dipping oars into the shimmering water, while joggers, bikers, and dogs run on the shore banks. One of my favorite sights as I traveled to work in downtown Portland was these mornings along the rivers.

In the middle of a busy workday, Portlanders downtown meander to Pioneer Square. They hustle like all city-dwellers, but they also lounge a lot, enjoying the scenery. The Square offers music, laughter, the occasional bum, dogs running back and forth, even sometimes a llama or two.

I recall sitting back on the white Adirondack chairs scattered on the red brick of the Square, watching hip-hop and break dancers, while groups of teenagers offered free hugs to any willing passerby. Tourists munched on Voodoo donuts or steaming piles of Pad Thai. Businesswomen slid off their heels and took a few minutes to sunbathe on the steps. Often, I would peer into booths at multicultural fairs or feel the vibrations of a radio festival. The best time in the Square, however, is when the entire block becomes a garden with hundreds or thousands of potted flowers and bushes transforming its brick floor into a blossoming heaven.

Portland’s setting is magical. A little over an hour in any direction lands you in different kind of nature: desert, mountains, beach, the river. The people are notoriously progressive and hardcore: snow, rain, wind, sunshine, hail, even sleet cannot keep them from their business. Bicyclists race the roads at any hour, in any kind of weather, in all kinds of attire: quintessential Portland.

A couple of years ago, Business Week released a survey that claimed that Portland was the Unhappiest City in the country. People were furious! I couldn’t understand that conclusion either. I saw abundant creativity, joy, ingenuity. I saw caring, compassion, celebration.

American author M.F.K. Fisher once wrote: “Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.” Portlanders live life through food—it is how friends come together, how heartbreak is healed, how benchmarks are celebrated. People meet over Stumptown coffee, mouthwatering cakes, almond croissants, frog legs and alligator jambalaya, vegan donuts, mason jars of sweet tea, or chilled glasses of frothing beer. They love farmers markets with their sumptuous cheeses, flowers, fruit, breads and exotic spreads—all local, all fresh, all gorgeous. Restaurants harmonize simplicity with affordability to tantalize the palette. There is, for example, the Whole Bowl, which has mastered the art of one simple dish–there’s nothing else on the menu–brown rice with red and black beans, decked with fresh avocado and “trace amounts of attitude.” Food, art, and the outdoors are all creative outlets inspired by the scenery. This is what drew me to Portland. I wanted to live in a place where adults had imagination and weren’t afraid to express it: I wanted to be surrounded by people who celebrated life through all of their senses—and expressed it as smart, sassy, creative, wild, appreciative, present. There’s something clearly alive in Portland, and it continues to evolve and sustain us. The stories engage, the sights inspire, and the people are open.

Portland offers the best of city life without much less grime and traffic. Its diversity (impoverished and superbly wealthy communities, mom-and-pops and the box stores, the quirky and the banal) feels to me like a celebration of life. Nature is honored, spirituality is respected. It is not only a city where sky and skyscraper meet, it is the city of my dreams, where river and rower move together and where the future is beckoning with light and great anticipation.