Why Portland Appeals

Could it be that we’re too late?

Here we are rolling in from the airport, just in time, we figure, to see the flowering of America’s next Great Place, the emergence of Portland as the city that’s cooler, greener, smaller and cheaper than the last Great Place, which I believe was somewhere north of here, on the coast. Portland, we understand, is nourished by coffee, beer and books, neighbored by forest and rivers, a damp promised land.

But our taxi hasn’t crossed the Willamette River yet, and Khalid the driver is already deep into an explanation of how Portland has gone to hell.

You have to lock your car when you park in the city now, he says. And the drive in from the airport to the downtown area can take as long as half an hour.

Outside, we see a rain-washed, greenery-draped downtown grid, but Khalid is going on about how cleanliness is down and the freeway design is flawed.

Even the weather, Khalid moans, is getting worse.

“It rains a lot,” he says, in the hopeless, awe-struck tone of a public health official describing a cholera outbreak.

At a moment like this, it helps to consider one’s source. Thirty-seven inches of rain and 225 days of solid clouds a year can weigh heavily on the psyche of someone raised somewhere drier, and under questioning, Khalid acknowledges that his youth was spent in the Libyan desert.

It helps to look out the window too.

Above the northern horizon rises snowy Mt. Hood, 11,235 feet above sea level. Eighty miles west lies the Pacific, with wine and cheese country (Tillamook) in between. To the northeast, about 35 miles beyond the city, looms the west end of the Columbia River Gorge, with 70-odd waterfalls spilling down its slopes. Continuing west and south, the Columbia skirts the northern edge of town. Meanwhile, a few miles south, separating most of the city’s residential neighborhoods from downtown, runs the Willamette. (Pronounce it Will-AM-ette or risk scorn by locals.)

Downtown, laid out in 1845, is made up of unusually short blocks (200 feet long), which makes it an urban area that feels more sociable and less like a concrete canyon. Nearby sprawls Washington Park, where the zoo and the city’s beloved rose test garden are tended; and farther to the northwest, the 4,600 acres of Forest Park, which include about 50 miles of trails for hikers and mountain bikers.

Half the city’s streets seem to end in green hillside. Seeing all this on a visit in 1938, the social critic Lewis Mumford told the worthies of Portland’s City Club that “You have an opportunity here to do a job of city planning like nowhere else in the world.”

Since 1979, an elected body separate from city government has enforced an Urban Growth Boundary girdling greater Portland, a zoning barrier intended to encourage city redevelopment and discourage suburban sprawl. But now the calls by developers and others for an expansion of the urban zone are multiplying, and researchers at Portland State University are projecting that the population of the five counties of greater Portland (Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Yamhill and Columbia) will rise from 1.42 million in 1995 to 1.62 million by 2005. At that rate, the population will double in about 50 years.

Crime is an issue too. Though the most recent FBI figures show that Portland’s rate of violent crime remains less than half the rate in Los Angeles, its rate of reported property crimes (such as burglary and auto theft) was substantially higher. In fact, 1994 FBI figures showed that the Portland metropolitan area’s increasing overall rate reached 6,539.9 reported crimes per 100,000 inhabitants per year--a higher overall crime rate than that of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, where the 1994 figure, down from 1993, was 6,425.1 reported crimes per 100,000 inhabitants.

So do I feel less safe in Portland? Nah. And if this friendly, green corner of Oregon is hell, I’ve spent far too much time worrying about the Golden Rule.

We settle in at the Fifth Avenue Suites Hotel at Fifth and Southwest Washington Street, a new lodging within the shell of an old department store. After millions in reconstruction and updating under the watch of San Francisco-based boutique hotel maven Bill Kimpton, the 10-story 1912 building reopened in May, featuring a lobby done up in bright canary-yellow hues and a restaurant, the Red Star Tavern and Roast House, that has been busy since its opening.

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There are coffeehouses and microbreweries on all sides helping to circulate what our Oregonian friend Shawn calls “the bodily fluids of Portland.” There are restaurants waiting to serve us large helpings of seafood and locally grown greens and mushrooms. And at the moment, there are elaborate floral displays on the bricks of Pioneer Courthouse Square. This is because we’ve arrived in time for the city’s annual Rose Festival, which features carnivals, fireworks and parades, and kicks off a summer-long series of civic events and celebrations.

I immediately establish an alternating cycle of depressants and stimulants--that is, beer and coffee--beginning with a pint of Nor’Wester Wheat Ale at Jake’s Famous Crawfish Restaurant, continuing with a cafe latte later. Then coffee mit schlag. Then Bitburger Pilsner. Then Black Magic coffee. Then McTarnahan’s Amber Ale. Then cappuccino. Then a Full Sail Amber Ale. Then a Portland Haystack Black Beer. Then a Nor’Wester raspberry weizen beer. (Yeah, I know, I missed a few cups of coffee in there. These things happen.) My wife, Mary Frances, rebels by occasionally ordering Oregon wine.

Jake’s is just seven blocks from our hotel, oddly isolated in a pocket neighborhood of windowless bars, residential hotels and cruising men, but it remains an institution for locals, who step through the urban grit to crowd its corner bar and enjoy its old tin ceilings and walls crowded with 19th century Northwest landscapes. The menu, changing daily, runs from Umpqua oysters to Alaskan Copper Ring king salmon. Coatracks stand at every booth, mute reminders of Khalid’s complaint.

Just a few blocks from Jake’s, and across the street from the redolent Blitz-Weinhard Brewery (home of Henry’s), we find the massive headquarters of Powell’s City of Books. Powell’s claims an inventory of 1 million new and used books and, even if that figure is a stretch, stands among the nation’s leading independent bookshops.

The main shop is at Northwest 10th Avenue and West Burnside Street, but its thematic satellites crop up all over town--the Powell’s travel bookshop at Pioneer Courthouse Square, the Powell’s cooking and gardening bookshop in the Bohemian-flavored Hawthorne neighborhood across the river, the Powell’s technical bookshop on Northwest Park Avenue, two more all-purpose city locations and one at the airport for good measure.

Downtown is also home to the Portland Art Museum; the recently opened Portland Center for the Performing Arts and its skylighted atrium; the Oregon History Center; the grassy, tree-shaded greenbelt of the city’s South Park Blocks; the catwalks, aquaria and thousands of shoes, shirts, shorts and hats on display in the Niketown store (Nike Inc.is headquartered in the Portland suburb of Beaverton); and the formidable bosom and 9-foot-long thighs of Portlandia, a 36-foot hammered copper female figure sculpted by Raymond Kaskey. Unveiled in 1985, Portlandia crouches above an entrance to the Portland Building, giving municipal bureaucracy a sensual front.

For surprises on a smaller scale, there is the city’s Saturday Market, which actually does business all weekend long in Portland’s Old Town area.

There are more than 270 booths occupied on the Saturday that we come shopping: pizza-hawkers, hair-braiders, one-man-bands, balloon-twisting clowns, church choirs, incense brokers, woodworkers, Grateful Dead devotees (Oregon is rife with them), the Portland Pretzel Co. (makers of the finest soft pretzel I have ever eaten), and on and on.

Beyond downtown, a stranger is likely to choose three of Portland’s roughly 90 neighborhoods for exploration: Northwest, Hawthorne and the Pearl. (And if you look lost or perplexed, there’s a good chance someone will volunteer to help you out. That happened to us three times during a four-day visit.)

The commercial blocks of Northwest, also known as Nob Hill, are viewed as the yuppie capital of the city and dominated by the upscale shops and pubs. The main drag is 23rd Avenue, beginning at Burnside, with spillover to 21st Avenue. We pass a sun-splashed afternoon there, and I sustain the stimulant-depressant cycle with a granita de cafe (a sort of coffee Slurpee) in an imported Italian cup at Torrefazione Italia, and later a Mirror Pond Ale, brewed in Bend, Ore., and later still a Deschutes Black Butte Porter.

Hawthorne, in the largely residential Southeast area across the Willamette, is Portland’s answer to Berkeley, a Bohemian zone neighbored by Reed College. Its liveliest stretch is from roughly 32nd to 39th, with spillover to Belmont between 34th and 39th, including the Ego, Hunger and Aggression Cafe. I didn’t taste the cafe’s food, just savored the name.

Strolling Hawthorne Boulevard, you can’t help but smile. At Biddy McGraw’s Irish Pub, where most of the evening programs run to poetry and folk music, a coming Thursday is billed as “invisible naked band night.” On the glass door of the Pasta Works grocery, a red circle and authoritative lettering declares the premises a “Portable Phone Free Zone”--just one sign, we were told, of a gathering backlash against cellular phones.

At the old Bagdad Theater & Pub, customers over 21 can buy a microbrew, order a pizza, then plop down another dollar and watch a movie while eating and drinking. This innovation comes courtesy of Portland’s industrious McMenamin brothers, whose empire embraces 26 taverns, restaurants and brewpubs, along with a 25-acre suburban compound where the McMenamins have converted the old Multnomah County poor farm into a winery, brewery, lodge and restaurant complex.

The least obvious of these visitor-friendly neighborhoods is the Pearl. In fact, it’s not on the tourist maps they hand out at the Fifth Avenue Suites and when we ask two cops for directions, they profess to have no idea what we’re talking about. But after a few more minutes of map consultation, we hike into the warehouse district around 13th Avenue and Hoyt Street.

Some of the warehouses are still warehouses, and at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday the sidewalks are as empty as those of Northwest 23rd Avenue are crowded. But gradually we discover a few galleries, a few residential loft buildings, a handful of interior design stores, restaurants and pubs. (On the first Thursday of each month, many of the area’s otherwise-private studios open to the public.)

We race through an exhibit of glass art as the closing hour draws near, dawdle through an engaging show organized by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (“The Tool Show,” featuring 48 artists’ paintings, sculptures, photos and assemblages of drills, shovels, hammers and saws, and so on) and, acting on previously received dining advice, peek into a bulky building that once held a plastic-bag factory.

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So Portland isn’t so bad. In fact, if you happen to catch it on four straight sunny days, as we did, it really does look, and taste, like the next Great Place. But I have to disclose one gnawing worry.

It may be premature, because I haven’t consulted with the researchers at Portland State University on this yet, but my preliminary calculations suggest that at this rate, within the next 30 years of annual visits to this place, I may run out of new beers and coffees.

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GUIDEBOOK

What’s Brewing in Portland

Getting there: Alaska, Delta and United airlines fly nonstop LAX-Portland, with restricted coach round-trip fares beginning at $181 on all three carriers, subject to availability.

Where to stay: Fifth Avenue Suites (506 SW Washington St.; telephone [800] 711-2971 or [503] 222-0001, fax [503] 222-0004). Advertised rates $155 nightly for a standard double room, $165 for suite. Weekend discount rates as low as $120, when available. Other high-end notables: the Vintage Plaza (another Kimpton rehab and business traveler favorite); the Heathman Hotel (Frank Lloyd Wright-style design); the Governor Hotel (great lobby full of murals on the Lewis and Clark theme); and the Benson Hotel (historic and well-located, but could stand interior sprucing up).

In the middle range, there’s the Imperial Hotel (400 SW Broadway; tel. [800] 452-2323 or [503] 228-7221, fax [503] 223-4551), where double rooms are $85-$95 nightly.

Where to eat: Wildwood Restaurant & Bar (1221 NW 21st Ave.; tel. [503] 248-9663). Northwest cuisine (Alaskan halibut, portabello mushrooms, Olympia oysters) dished individually or family-style. Dinner entrees: $16-$21.

Higgins (1239 SW Broadway; tel. [503] 222-9070), a popular power meal place, is just a few doors up from the performing arts center. Dinner entrees: $13.75-$23.50.

Jake’s Famous Crawfish (401 SW 12th Ave.; tel. [503] 226-1419) dates to 1892 and offers astaggering seafood selection. Dinner entrees: $8.95-$28.50.

Bima (1338 NW Hoyt; tel. [503] 241-3465) offers stark, loosely defined Gulf Coast cuisine (catfish, corn cakes, churrasco, along with grilled trout and baby back ribs) and airy postmodern design in the city’s gallery-and-loft Dinner entrees: $12-$16.

Bijou Cafe (132 SW Third Ave.; tel. [503] 222-3187). Semi-Bohemian breakfast near the Saturday Market; under $6.75.

For more information: Oregon Tourism Division, 775 Summer St. N.E., Salem, OR 97310; tel. (800) 547-7842 or (503) 986-0000.