Portland: Vancouver's bolder sister

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The Kennedy School in Portland was saved from demolition by savvy neighbourhood activists. Now it's a thriving cultural centre for locals and visitors. (PNG Merlin Archive) (POSTMEDIA)

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PORTLAND -- The Kennedy School in Portland was saved from demolition by savvy neighbourhood activists. Now it's a thriving cultural centre for locals and visitors. (SUPPLIED) (POSTMEDIA)

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PORTLAND -- Voodoo Doughnuts in downtown Portland, Ore. (PNG Merlin Archive) (POSTMEDIA VANCOUVER SUN)

I cannot help but have a soft spot in my heart for Portland, if only for the fact that on the week my wife and I visited, the Give A Sh-- Club was holding its "mostly monthly" forum. In it, participants were encouraged to do "a little bit of drinking and a whole lot of talking about local and national issues."

Of Portland's nature, it's all there in the club's title.

The wry but earnest call to activism; the fine line trod between seriousness and self-satire; the slacker dynamic fuelled by local microbreweries and artisanal distilleries. It's at once twee yet not, fun but adult. Of the three Cascadia sisters -- the other siblings being Vancouver and Seattle -- Portland is the most amiable and adventurous. She'd be the older sister willing to try anything, the first one in the water skinny-dipping.

Consider for example, our hotel: We stayed downtown at the Ace, a restored -- but not overly restored -- hotel originally built in 1912. There is nothing like it in Vancouver, which is a pity. There easily could be.

It's flophouse chic, with claw-foot tubs in the bathrooms, double-height ceilings, original tiled lobby (complete with coin-operated photo booth) and turn-of-the-century oak flooring in the hallways and rooms. The old is set off by the hipsterish new: large-screen TVs, high-end toiletries and bedding, sleek minimalist furnishings, original wall murals in each room (above our bed was an American eagle with the inscription Love Thy Neighbor), and -- in a nod to the vibrant local music scene -- turntables that came with an eclectic supply of LPs. (Ours ranged from the newest Fleetwood Foxes LP to The Best of Caruso.) Even the room's mini-bars spoke Portlandese: It came stocked with Glee gum, Boy-lan lemon seltzer and banana bread power bars. Sometimes I suspect Portland is in on its own joke.

Why would a Vancouverite go to Portland?

It does serendipity so much better than us. Some of this is due to a more relaxed licensing environment -- getting a liquor or business licence is vastly easier than in B.C. But more than that, Portland is a showcase of the American genius for experimentation. The city's unofficial motto, and favoured bumper sticker, is Keep Portland Weird. It's that self-satire again, but a call to arms, too.

Case in point: While we were there, the big indie rock band the Shins, who call Portland home, gave a 1 p.m. children's concert at the Kennedy School. The show was part of the charming You Who! concert series, co-founded by Chris Funk of the Decembrists, Portland's other big indie band.

The shows are split up into a half-hour of variety entertainment -- singalongs, cartoons, puppetry, "interactive dance get-downs," to quote the program -- followed by a half-hour rock show.

The Halloween show featured -- good lord -- the heavy-metal band Red Fang. The kids love the shows, as do their lucky parents who get to come along. The Shins sold out.

But just as remarkable as the shows is the venue, the Kennedy School.

Built in 1915, it was an elementary school in the middle of Portland's northeast Concordia neighbourhood. Decommissioned in the 1990s and falling into disrepair, it was slated for demolition until neighbourhood activists rallied to save it. Their efforts led to the school being sold to the McMenamin brothers, the Portland duo whose chain of microbrew pubs and hotels now stretches across Oregon and Washington.

The McMenamins restored the school, decorated the hallways with original art and murals and turned the school in a hotel. The 35 rooms, all former classrooms, come with original chalkboards. The school auditorium screens movies: concerts are held in the gym. There are several bars and restaurants, including the Detention room, where you can enjoy a bourbon and a cigar. The Concordia Brewery, which makes nine different beers for in-house consumption, is in what used to be the girls' lavatory. The Kennedy School is now in the National Register of Historic Places.

Remarkably, the school is right in the middle of a charming residential area, a bit of creative and contrary zoning that would be unthinkable in Vancouver. But it works. The school's resuscitation helped breathe new life into a neighbourhood that was in danger of decline.

Nor is the Kennedy School's situation unique. Pubs and entertainment venues are found all through the city's residential areas, and they seem to coexist with their neighbours well enough.

Vancouver? We girdle our entertainment venues in red tape. While we still grapple with the issue of allowing liquor in movie theatres, Portland has a dozen brew 'n' views, independent theatres that show films and serve liquor and food. Some are swank, some funky, but the prices are uniformly cheap. The Living Room Theaters, across the street from our hotel, had six screens showing foreign, indie and first-run films, and patrons could either eat in the stylish café and bar, or be served in the theatre by theatre staff.

Portland is not perfect. Its infrastructure is bad and getting worse. Street people are everywhere. The city is bisected by a freeway, and its downtown has a shabby, worn feel to it.

And tell a Portlander you're from Vancouver and you will hear how much they love our city and how clean and safe and beautiful it is and how good the food is. The grass is always greener.

But we could learn some things from Portland, maybe unloose our corset a bit. The weird sister is already in the water, naked. It looks like fun.

-- Vancouver Sun

For a real taste of the city, go for the unconventional.

The Ace Hotel

1022 SW Stark Street, downtown Portland, 1-503-228-2277.

Not your run-of-the-mill hotel: think upscale hostel, hipsters on expense account. Rooms start at $95 for a shared bathroom, $135 for a standard.

The Kennedy School

5736 NE 33rd Ave., northeast Portland, toll-free from Canada 1-888-249-3983 or, in Portland, 1-503-249-3983.

School was never so fun. Take in a show, walk the halls with a beer brewed on-site or stay after class in the Detention Room bar. Hotel rooms, converted classrooms complete with chalkboard, start at $115 for a queen, $125 for a king.

Food carts

Named the No. 1 street-food city in the world by U.S. News, Portland is cartivore heaven. As of last December, the city had 689 licensed food carts and the number is growing. You want Nutella-smeared waffles or pork-belly burgers? They're on the menu somewhere. Usually found grouped together in "pods," the largest pod of carts can be found taking up the entire block at SW Alder between 9th and 10th, with around 60 carts. Two must-tries: Nong's Khao Man Gai, poached chicken with rice and spicy sauce for $6.50 -- so delicious you'll moan involuntarily -- and the Eurotrash cart's Fishy Chips -- breaded and deep-fried Spanish sardines with aioli dipping sauce, $6 for bodies only, $4 for heads only. For a more upscale snack, the Eurotrash cart offers seared foie gras on a bed of thin-cut fries for $13.

Powell's Books

1-503-228-4651.

Now with a half-dozen stores in the Portland area, Powell's is the largest independent used and new bookstore in the world. Its flagship store, the City of Books at 1005 West Burnside, takes up an entire city block and boasts more than a million volumes, many of them rare and out of print. Powell's is the bibliophile's mecca. (Portland is a literate town, evidenced not only by upcoming appearances by Garrison Keillor and Jeffrey Eugenides, but by the Naked Girls Reading show, which is exactly that -- naked girls reading. This month's show features Northwest authors, for those interested in such things.)

Voodoo Doughnuts

With three outlets, the original downtown location is at 22 SW 3rd Ave., 1-503-241-4704. In the Portland tradition of keeping it weird, this is weird. It is, yes, a doughnut shop -- motto, "The Magic is in the Hole!!!" -- but one in which it is possible to book a legal wedding ceremony for $300, with coffee and doughnuts for six people. Couples are married under a large velvet painting of Isaac Hayes, Voodoo's patron saint.

Voodoo once did a doughnut glazed with Nyquil and dusted with Pepto-Bismol, until the health department objected, and now offers such delicacies as the Old Dirty Bastard (chocolate frosting, crushed Oreos and peanut butter), the Voodoo Doll (doll-shaped doughnut with chocolate frosting and pretzel stake through its heart, it oozes raspberry jelly when bitten), the Bacon Maple Bar (maple frosting topped with bacon strips) and the Captain My Captain (vanilla frosting topped with Captain Crunch cereal).

I'm running out of room here, and there is plenty more to see in Portland -- the microbrew pubs, the huge local music scene, the International Rose Test Garden, the Lan Su Chinese Garden, the terrific shopping (no sales tax!) -- so if you want to see what's going on in town while you're there, pick up a copy of one of Portland's two terrific free papers, the Portland Mercury or Willamette Week.

-- Postmedia News

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 2, 2012 d6