PDX, uno.
31 July 2004
I should like Portland a lot better than I do. I did live there for almost a year, long enough to discern the nice things about it. It has a lot of nice old houses, interesting businesses, good places to eat, an excellent library system, a pretty good public transportation system, and it was easy to walk most of the places I wanted to go. The record stores were good, and the bookstores (or, more precisely, THE bookstore) are incomparable. The people there are generally nice-seeming, and lots of them are involved in new, interesting things. These are all things I appreciate and look for in a city. So, what’s the problem?
It rains there.
It rains there a lot.
This seems self-evident: I mean, everyone knows that it rains a lot in that part of Oregon, right? Knowing and experiencing are very different things, though. To someone who grew up in the Southwest, like I did, rainy days are fun and exciting since we get approximately five? six? of them a year. (Unless it’s this year, where there seem to be a lot more of them.) But six or so months of nothing but rain is very different, especially when it’s just the drippy, drizzly, pee-shower kind of rain rather than a big, bold cleansing burst of rain, the type where everything smells nice and new afterwards. Worse than the rain is the low ceiling on the sky: the clouds above seem like they’re only four inches from the top of your head, as if you were living all the time in a big grey box. Dealing with this non-stop from September to March or so is a recipe, if not for seasonal affective disorder, for hovering close to the bong for half of the year. You have to get through it somehow.
Which is why it’s a great place to visit in the summer: the area reaps the benefit of all that moisture: things are green, lush, and, usually, cool. These are the Propaganda Months — May through August — when the good things about living in PDX are evident and the big, big downside — the six-month rinse cycle — is not.
(Sorry. I usually feel as if I have to explain my feelings on this matter when the subject of Portland comes up, since lots of people look at me like I’m on crack when I tell them that I went there and then voluntarily left. It’s a great place to live, but not for me. Plus, you can’t pump your own gas there, and that drives me nuts.)
So, anyway, vacation. I took advantage of all that is good about PDX. I took the light rail a lot, I walked around plenty, I ate a lot, and I did a lot of book and record shopping. I drove out to the coast one day and got to go to the beach, and then, just a short drive away, got to walk in the forest. You can’t beat that. It was hot a couple of days while I was there — 103 degrees, which is unremarkable where I live, but incomprehensible in Portland — so I spent a couple of days seeking out shade and ice cream.
Fortunately, the Oregon Death Flu did not manifest itself until after I got home.
Next chapter: specific highlights.