PORTLAND — At 30,000 feet, you can see a layer of L.A. drinking water coating the Sierra — our reservoir, our piney and magnificent filtration system. Think it’s been a good winter that way. Then again, I’ve always been a glass-is-half-full kind of guy.
By the way, I have a theory: Airline coffee never fully leaves the body. It’s digestible only in tiny bursts, like other micro-plastics. Mostly, it swirls in what engineers call a “closed loop.”
Still, I request a cup from the flight attendant. After all, a guy’s gotta loop.
See, football is over and tax season begins. I fear my annual post-gridiron funk, followed by the usual February rut. Not a bad time to hop a flight to the Pacific Northwest, Gate B4 out of Burbank, cozy as a phone booth. I tell you, you meet the nicest people when they’re accidentally standing on your foot.
As we all know, commercial air travel means a loss of humanity, of civility, of comfort, though down below us is Donner Pass, where real atrocities have happened, worse even than airline coffee and wooden swizzle sticks.
So, I’m all smiles….trust me, total smiles. Some 950 miles to the north, Portland beckons, a town of unconventional and chronic pleasures.
By nature, big cities interest me, almost every one offers something special — a good pool hall, for instance, or oysters smoked in butter and cream.
Jeeeez, suddenly I’m channeling Anthony Bourdain?
Yet, like him, I’ll note that our wonderful country is being homogenized to an uncomfortable degree; really, it borders on desecration. Best to celebrate these funky and original old towns. And there are few cities with more scruffy character than Portland, Oregon.
You don’t visit Portland so much as you stick it under your tongue and savor it. Outside New Orleans, I’ve never seen a food outpost like this. In Portland, it’s as if the great grub finds you.
Dining out here is not a stuffy, pretentious experience, as it often is in L.A. or New York. Here, they eat, really eat. They don’t care that their rib cage no longer shows or that their Lulus don’t fit them like wet paint. Not sure they even have those here.
Mostly, they just pick up another flannel shirt at Costco, 12 bucks.
Trust me, I admire Portland the way Robert Frost loved country lanes and overnight dustings of snow.
Have to confess that escalating costs make me ponder alternative locations like this. My sis, Eleanor, a longtime denizen, is appalled that a little house next to hers is going for $400k. Welcome, I suppose, to 1988.
In any case, I am here for a glorious week of seeing my sister through a gruesome foot surgery, bringing her meds, her phone, re-heating soup, running errands, taking out the trash bins, walking her slurpy little dog, Gigi.
So far, none of this stuff seems beyond my skill set. But the week is young and I — at last glance — am not.
As Dr. Mercer does his thing, I duck into the Biscuits Cafe in Happy Valley, a steamy and inviting breakfast joint that serves heaping slabs of perfect hash browns, perhaps the only reason I bother to wake up each morning.
As I pay, the server says “God bless you.” Wow. So bold. That could easily get you fired in Los Angeles, where blessings are often discouraged.
Up here, they apparently still honor God a bit, at least in little pockets northeast of the city.
As with any place, Portland is best defined by the food it serves: creative, artful, affordable, sustainable, magical, moving and graced by the gods manning the grill tops.
Breakfast as early Mass. Food as holy water.
Once a year, I reach out on behalf of the Erskine Family Compassion Fund, which honors my late wife and son. The money goes to struggling families across Los Angeles, providing everything from blankets, to books, to financial support. Any amount helps. Click here to donate. If you prefer to send a check, please make it out to LCPC Parent Ed, and send to LCPC Parent Ed, 626 Foothill Boulevard, La Canada, CA 91011. Thank you.
Coming Saturday: Cupid. He’s such a little punk.
Thanks for a smiley reminder of the unique atmosphere and foodie paradise that Portland offers. My stepson recently became a police officer there and loves living in a place with “weather,” having grown up in So Cal. We have visited Portland and Eugene several times. Love the greenery, food, people and relative affordability. But I just cannot embrace the weather like my stepson does. With climate change, it’s gone from rain to frequent snow. So we hold on here in sunny OC. You are a great brother to help your sister after surgery. Prayers for her swift recovery. Enjoy those hash browns and, of course, the Voodoo donuts as big as your head.
God bless you for looking after your sister post-surgery. My own brother has done the same for me after a few surgeries, and it truly was a blessing.
Maybe you could connect with my sister Holly….she is in West Linn but might want to meet up for a chat….sisters are golden…enjoy your visit (and brothers who come to the aid of a sister are heroes IMHO…)
I’d have loved to have had coffee with Holly. My visit is over, but hopefully next time. Those Helgren girls are Barrington legends.
Not sure if you are still in the Portland area but at least we are having a stretch of nice weather! Enjoy your time here!
Hi Holly. I was there last week. Great weather and left before the rains rolled in over the weekend.
Chris,
Worked as an airline pilot for 40 years drinking airline coffee. Maybe THAT’S what’s wrong with me…
(LCPC donation made.)
Jeff
Jeff, thanks for the donation as well as getting us safely where we wanted to go over the years!
I am due for a trip to Portland too! If you can, make a trip to Dove Vivi, a wonderful place for deep dish corn meal crust pizza and salads to die for. You will not be sorry! Best wishes to your sister for a speedy recovery. She is so blessed to have you there.
God Bless you Chris! You’ve written an entire column on Portland without any mention whatsoever of its disastrous governmental faults, rampant open drug abuse and a downtown being ravaged by unmonitored criminal behavior.
Indeed your glass is half full! Congratulations!
Look on the bright side of life -Monty Python
As usual, your pics are visual food, and it’s great that you’re a cookin’ bro feeding your sis love and the condiments of support. Portland has always seemed to me a rough cob, a city with a blurry independent edge, perpetually wet behind the ears and maybe also a little damp inside the head (all that water-logging rain and Summer humidity, you know), but you’ve found a way to smooth and dry it out with Winter meals that go down appetizingly easy, like a train slowing at a station. And then there is its famous rose garden, a blazing glistening tiered fruit cake of fragrant luxurious delight, worth consuming fantasy at any time, but a deliriously rousing feast in Spring and early Summer. Oh! the places you’ll go. Bon appetit.
Hi, Chris!!
I tried twice to donate to the Memorial Fund and my donation did not go through. Is it just me or is there a problem with the website?
Thank you so much. I’ll get back to you with an answer.
Karen, did a little circle just spin and spin? That’s what just happened to me. I’ll report it. So sorry for the trouble.
Me, too…
Karen, seems to be working now. I had trouble with it last night too. This morning, seems to be working. Many thanks for your generosity.
You’re still on the Hash Brown Pilgrimage? I hope you find Mecca-or wherever those elusive hash browns exist. Very cool you’re tending to your sibling. So, so lovely to care for our loved ones. It really is the little things that make life worthwhile. Thanks for the uplifting thoughts while the country churns.
I can’t believe we live in a time when we have to be careful to say God Bless You.
I will take a “Blessing “ from any religion anytime! We need it, and you are a blessing to us!
…and you’re back home, many things satisfied and done. It is mid-winter, and probably most of us could use a brief change of venue, if only to break the spell the season can cast on the familiar and mundane. Some go to the tropics, some head for institutional snow, and others whirl in the vortex of the season like little bits of stellar ice, hoping to be transformed into flaring stars by the feverish beat of Spring up ahead. but for now…
When Less Is Not More
What is my spirit but for sound?
Yet silence greets the Winter door
In February; what is more
The synergy that can be found
In the light has little to say
To energy, and hours go ’round
Their little circles, gone astray
Like drifting clouds. their vacant stare
Diffused with luminosity
Much like the way my thoughts proceed
So bright with nothing that I see
Would thunder with the crash I need;
Excitement is not what I seek
Rather, what’s reciprocal:
Echos to charge the vacant week–
Promise of storms–something vocal
Lightning being provocateur
Of passion, like that swing in Spring–
Heated look, come hither allure–
That sense of something happening
That roars from nowhere to the ear
Like steaming coffee to the cup:
You see and taste just what you hear–
Know something exquisite is up
About to overwhelm your sense
Of nothing in the present tense
With longing for something immense
When less is not more, in essence…
…and today began a little quiet parade of rainy fronts, with more in the offing next week…and we may be on our way at last to an early Spring.
A poet & we know it! Another gem!
A “quiet parade of rainy fronts.” Love that.