Portland Metblogs » clevergirl

Portland is a top-walker, but you still can’t take your beer with you…

clevergirl — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:11:49 +0000

I’m back! From a hopefully short-lived extremely busy time at both work and home and everywhere in between. And yes, I have some new exciting information for you. This will likely not be a surprise to most anyone, but Portland has come in as number 10 on Walk Score’s top 10 most walkable cities, with the Pearl, Old Town/Chinatown, and Downtown all being our most walkable neighborhoods. Looking through the other cities, all of the “most walkable neighborhoods” are in downtown areas, which seems to be a “well, duh,” statement to me, since, well… duh. Of course the more urban areas tend to be more “walkable” with the increase in amenities in a small area. Anyhow, iff you haven’t checked out your neighborhood’s Walk Score, fill in your address and compare against your friends’ neighborhoods. My own Center comes in with a score of 80 (with my more immediate area coming in with a 71/100 – very walkable, though for some reason the map does not see some amenities near my place, like the QFC on Burnside, but denotes some businesses incorrectly, like Commercial Refrigeration on Glisan as a restaurant). And in fact, I do tend to walk to a number of places in my ‘hood often. This is a fantastic tool for checking out other possible neighborhoods for relocation (also points out how many bars there are, whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to you).

Speaking of bars, the boyfriend and I will be hitting up the Brewers’ Fest tomorrow at opening time. As these type of things tend to grow exponentially each year, I’m excited about trying all of the tasty wares, but I’m not too excited about the possible hours of waiting in line. If things look too bad, we may just head to Belmont Station to attend the tapping there of some kegs not featured at the OBF. Have I mentioned that I’ve been here now a year? My Portlandversary was on 7/15, and I can’t think of another place (within reason) I would rather be. ^_^

OMSI sans children

clevergirl — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:37:30 +0000

The boyfriend and I attended the adults’-only night at OMSI this week and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves – even moreso than I had hoped. This is a truly fantastic idea – the request came for those 21 & over (though I did spy some teenage-looking peoples) to enjoy OMSI without the presence of the younguns. The tickets were $10 per person (free for members), which is cheaper than the normal fare of $11, and local businesses offered free samples of wine, liquor, beer (duh), chocolate, and other misc. foodstuffs, plus there was a snacky buffet with cheese, crackers, fruit, and veg. Though I am fond of children, it was incredibly awesome to walk about without tiny-people shrieks and having to keep an eye out for knee-level heads. Plus, we were able to play with a lot of the stuff the kids normally monopolize, like the ball room (we spent a good 20 minutes in there). This is supposed to be a monthly gig, so we’ll definitely be going back when the next exhibit opens. I found out about this happening via the OMSI email list (which is actually quite informative and useful). I don’t see a site up for this specific event just yet, but hopefully there will be one soon.

One downside – being One Without A Motor Vehicle, I took TriMet to OMSI, a first for me. As OMSI is one of the big draws in the city, it seems strange to me that there isn’t a bus line or stop closer to the museum. There are stops on the Hawthorne bridge itself which are about 5 blocks from OMSI’s main entrance, but they put one who may not be at ease with the traffic and use of the Eastbank Esplanade in a precarious place. From what I understand, this will eventually be resolved with the planned pedestrian/streetcar crossing over the Willamette, but that’s not going to be started until lord knows when. Walking isn’t a big deal to me, but I can see how it would be a deterrent for someone with less mobility and/or children.

Our crazy skies

clevergirl — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:35:48 +0000

Most of us should be used to the overcast-ness and rain-ocity of the great northwest, but holy smokes! The storm last night was fantastic! And forgive me for speaking of weather, because I know that it’s the most boring thing ever, but I really truly thought that thunderstorms didn’t exist here. Earlier this week, I saw one meager lightning strike just east of Mt. Tabor when I was walking home from the store, and that was the first one I had seen since moving here nearly a year ago. I’m a huge fan of lightning and thunder and good downpour, so when I woke up last night to something that sounded like aforementioned Tabor blowing its top off, I got excited. The lightning flashed and I counted until the rumble-crash of the thunder would sneak past my apartment. My cat was freaking out, and I was too tired to stay up for the early fireworks, so I eventually fell asleep. I would love to see storms like that more often here, but I guess when they’re so rare, it makes them an extra-special treat. At least it cleared a little more smoke and haze from the air. Speaking of, keep your eyes on the air quality, outdoorsy people – we’re getting a lot of junk up from the California fires and some of our own right now, so don’t strain the lungs too much out there.

On bike riding and sweatiness

clevergirl — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:08:45 +0000

Holy crap was it hot last weekend. As a person sans air conditioner, and with a slightly crazy side, I forced the boyfriend to help me clean the house (as was previously planned) leading to nearly dying from heat exhaustion. Fortunately for him, I sent him down to Foti’s after cleaning for some gyro goodness for dinner – there was just no way I was going to turn on the (now sparkling) stove on Saturday. So yes, we missed out on the Organic Brewfest at Overlook park, and besides a multi-store grocery and Laurelwood run on Sunday, we didn’t much leave the apartment (though I might have, had I read the Dave Knows suggestions).

I started bike commuting a few weeks ago with partial hopes that it would help me adapt to the rising temperatures, among other things. Since my ride in to downtown is mostly downhill, and the mornings are still cool, my cooldown time before entering cube-land is short, but on the way home, with the all-uphilledness of the region and hot patches of air, I’m sweating something fierce by the time I get home. As a convenience I sometimes stop by the Whole Foods/Wild Oats on Burnside to pick up groceries, and I’m a bit embarrassed by the being hot and having helmet hair while I’m walking through the store with my pant leg tucked into my sock. With a city such as this with a ton of bike commuters, I would assume that the employ would see plenty of people like me, but even with the pile of bikes out front (Dear Whole Foods, please get more bike parking, kthx), I didn’t see another person looking disheveled in the store.

I’m not an easily embarrassed person, but I’m wondering what the consensus is on this kind of situation: Do you hop into the store with your hair plastered down and mingle with the hipsters, or do you go home and cool down, then go back the mile and a half to the store while looking at least somewhat presentable?

Sick of it yet?

clevergirl — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:13:11 +0000

Happy Wednesday, kids. This week is already too much for me – dealing with the day job and the boyfriend being sick has left me no patience for dealing with the nutters on the MAX. Sure enough, there are copious amounts of visitors unfamiliar with our city to whom I am glad to be of service, but the screaming children running up and down a moving train, their parents gleefully ignoring them, is a bit nerve-wracking (especially directly after work). I’ll be taking some photos of the new ships on the Willamette in between a dentist appointment and the Timbers match against Minnesota tomorrow afternoon, so here’s to hoping the clowns won’t be getting in my way this time.

For those of you sick of or too good for the Rose Fest (specifically the Rose Floral Parade on Saturday), Dave from Dave Knows: Portland has some great tips on how to avoid the festivities (there’s also an amazing time-lapse video of the fireworks from last Friday, if you missed it). As this is my first (collective gasp) Rose Fest, I might get up early enough to become part of the throng downtown or at the very least, try to talk the crew at the Horse Brass into tuning in the broadcast while we’re enjoying morning brews and breakfast.

Bridges, Trains, and Roses

clevergirl — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:01:43 +0000

Now that the two three-day weekends (at least for me) are over, things should be getting back to normal here, which includes me spewing about everything I have been saving up for the past week. Thusly:

The Columbia River Crossing project needs input from the public, and the current feedback period is only open until July 1. Last Friday, a coalition of 13 groups requested a 60-day extension to said period to give ample time for those people and organizations involved to read the 5,000-page Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) dealing with the project. I wouldn’t suggest reading it yourself – I got stuck around page 50, and struggled to get that far – but glean as much information as you can on the project (try here and here, for starters) and chime in with your $.02. This is a Big Deal that will affect major transportation in and out of our fair city for decades to come, and yes, it will affect you in some way.

Nextly: I took the train (and bus) to Vancouver BC with the boyfriend 2 weekends ago, and I must say: train travel is awesome, though travel to Vancouver could use some help. Supposedly, there will be direct train service to Vancouver BC from us down here in Oregon in time for the Olympics (a good bit of the city is torn up due to transportation additions to the waterfront and Olympic Village), but I won’t believe it until I see it. We’ve already had a review of the train ride from PDX to SEA, so here’re the bits:

Pros:
Far less security hassle than the airport: we arrived and boarded barely 20 minutes before our scheduled departure
Access to a proper power outlet (120V) for unrestricted use
We had the ability to use our cellphones where there was reception (though chose not to)
The car we were in was incredibly quiet, and we whispered most of the trip
One can bring his/her own liquids aboard! No more smuggling 3oz bottles of vodka! We brought our massive flask and some mixers and made cocktails at our seats
The seats were comfortable and there were plenty of bathrooms to go around

Cons:
Delays – we were over an hour late to Seattle, but the connection was guaranteed, so some people got to wait on the bus for us. Sorry, people!
When we boarded, the a/c was broken in our car, and we were sweating up a storm (hottest day yet of the year + running a suitcase from the MAX to Union Station = ick!), but it was fixed when we departed (which was, granted, nearly 45 minutes later)
This is really about the bus – The bus sucks. It’s better than taking Greyhound the whole way, but the bus just seemed that much more crappy after such a pleasant train experience
Price – It was less than $200 for both of us to get to Vancouver and back, but I would love to be able to take the train down to Sacramento and maybe across the continent without having to sell my firstborn and a kidney. Get the prices for 6+ hours of travel down to an affordable rate (i.e. cheaper than airfare), and I’ll start booking my travel today.

And one more quick one!! Holy crap, it’s Rose Festival season again! The rides are going up to make Waterfront park a muddy mess, should the rain continue (opening Thursday) and the fireworks kick everything off on Friday. The good stuff (boats!) will start floating in on Thursday (Tall Sailing ships, 5/29-6/5, then Fleet Week 6/4-6/8). I’m so excited – more on that soon!

Amtrak’s Washington bias

clevergirl — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:38:51 +0000

Now, I don’t want to become the “alternative transportation and cooking writer” here at PDX Metblogs, but hey, it’s what I pay attention to. The boyfriend and I are heading up to Vancouver, BC this weekend, and we’re going by train. I took the train a lot when I was a kid to visit my dad, but I am sad to say that I haven’t ridden Amtrak since I was at least 14. My last train ride, in fact, was in France in 2004. I absolutely love train travel, and since the last town I lived in had no passenger rail service, I was extremely excited to find out that a train goes all the way from here to Canada!

Oh, how I was mistaken. Oh, yes, there is a train that goes from here to BC, but it stops overnight in Seattle. The one and only train to Vancouver leaves from Seattle early in the morning and the only train from Vancouver leaves too late in the afternoon to take it all the way through to Portland. So we’re stuck taking the Amtrak bus on the Seattle-Vancover trip and back again, which I wasn’t too pleased to find out. Since Amtrak is really pushing the Cascades line, they included a free “companion pass” in the fantastic Chinook Book, which is actually why I purchased the darned thing anyway (though all in all, it has been awesome). My beef: Since the train does not go all the way to Vancouver from Eugene (where the Cascades line starts), the coupon in the book does not cover the entire route. The furthest one can go and use the coupon (in Oregon) is from Eugene to Seattle, and I really haven’t a need to go to Seattle. After finding out that the fare with the coupon is the exact same as the fare without the coupon (because of the way they bill the bus and train rides separately with the coupon in use), I’m keeping the savings for the next time we decide to take the train to Eugene (erm…). Thus, I call shenanigans on Amtrak. Why have a coupon marketed mostly to the Portland market (in the Portland Chinook Book) when it’s only useful to travel in a 3-hour radius, whereas the coupon offered in the Seattle-based Chinook Book would cover the full Cascades train lines?

Deschutes in the Pearl

clevergirl — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:22:38 +0000

Now, unless you’ve been living under a rock (or not in Portland, I guess), you know that Deschutes opened their highly anticipated brewery and pub in the Pearl last week. Not wanting to go right on opening weekend, the boyfriend and I headed over on Tuesday evening after some shopping downtown and were greeted with a thriving crowd. We enjoyed some (now even more) locally brewed libations while waiting for our Olive Garden-esque pager to go off, signaling a vacated table, just for us. The place is HUGE, and by HUGE I mean really, really, really big. The indoor décor feels very Scottish with tartan carpets and lots of wood, and though the area is very open and tall, it doesn’t overwhelm due to the placement of separators (wainscoting, really) cordoning off sections of the floor. We were signaled after 25 of our expected 45-minute wait and were ushered to a table near the middle of the restaurant. We made sure the beer kept coming (enjoying new Portland-only brews as well as some old favorites) and ordered some food.

This is where the story gets interesting, kids – I had been reading all these reviews that there is some really good food at Deschutes – if so, I didn’t get much of it. I wanted to try the Elk Burger (being a game and a burger fan – not much there to go wrong), but instead went with the Cuban sandwich with a salad. The boyfriend ordered the fish and chips. The food was out incredibly quickly (though brought out by a different server, a pet peeve of mine, and without our requested sides), but when I bit into my Cuban, I was left wanting. It was okay, but it wasn’t really that good – the different meat tastes got lost in the saltiness of the corned beef, and the pepper tasted, well, from a tin. The bottom bread was soaked through with the moisture from the pepper, whereas the top slice was nicely browned and crispy. The salad was okay – just standard spring mix with a side of bleu cheese dressing (large hunks of actual bleu cheese were appreciated).

As we often do, the boyfriend and I stopped at our halfway points and swapped plates. Biting into the fish was a lovely crispy experience, but it seemed like the coating wasn’t “traditional” fish and chip coating and something more like Japanese panko. While it does provide a good crust, it just isn’t “fish and chips” to me without a proper wet coat before frying. It also seemed like maybe both the fries and the fish were fried at a slightly lower than standard tempurature, as the fries had taken on a lot of oil, and the fish was slightly flatish on one side and greasy on the bottom. The tartar sauce served was tasty, but there was no vinegar brought out (and we forgot to ask). The fries were the one saving grace – even though they were on the greasy side, they must fry them in something other than the standard cheapo soybean oil, because the flavor was fantastic. We eat our fries with mayonnaise, and these went perfectly together. They tasted like real potatoes (not re-formed starch), and we ate every single one of them.

All in all, go to Deschutes for the beer, and continue testing the food. It could have been an off night, but I checked with 3 others who visited the new pub within the last week who had the same experience. I’ll go back, of course, and try the elk burger (especially if the fries are that good consistently), and beer beer beer, the fantastic beer. Lovely glorious beer.

Stats!

Atmosphere: 7/10
Service: 7/10
Food: 5/10 (the fries upped the average a good 1.5 points)
Did I mention the beer?: 10/10

Deschutes Portland Pub and Brewery

210 NW 11th Avenue
Portland
(503) 296-4906

Stuck on the bus

clevergirl — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:53:32 +0000

Moving to Portland was partially to get out of a town I really really really despise, and partially to get to live in a place with an extensive public transportation system. I grew up in California, between the south SF bay area and a town north of Sacramento. As the time I spent there was all pre-driver’s license, I relied heavily on the public transportation there, which in the bay area (at least at the time) was awesome, but was severely lacking 100mi north. VTA (Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority) hours were long, the waiting time was little, and I felt safe on the bus and lightrail (in San Jose). One thing about the busses down there was that they were dirty – kids were always putting gum on the backs of seats and most of the windows had become translucent due to the myriad of scratches that had built up over years of wee taggers satiating their need to mark yet another solid with his/her scribble, as well as any other surface.

TriMet vehicles tend to be really clean and comfortable to ride. Sure, there have been a couple of late-night puking sessions on the MAX (not me, thankyouverymuch), those who don’t shower, and once in a while the bus and even the MAX get to capacity, but for the most part, our public transportation is great. The only big problem I have with TriMet currently is the sometimes missing busses (walked a full 2 miles along my path before the 71 went zooming by one day), and the damned machines that never work (but I have a monthly pass, so that’s moot to me for the most part). What do you love/hate about TriMet? Do you actually send requests into their “comment” lines? I might be notorious for letting them know at least once a week that the machine they’ve never fixed at the 60th Ave MAX stop is indeed still broken…

TriMet’s verbose peoplemovers

clevergirl — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:10:51 +0000

This is slightly old news, for those of you who read the same Portland-centric transportation blogs that I do, but TriMet is giving the buses voices! You read that right – not only will the buses announce their eventual destinations to riders at the stop on an external speaker, but they’re equipping the buses to do the same for major stops inside the buses, much like the MAX and Streetcar do per stop already. The lines taking on the system (powered mostly by GPS) are few for now, but so far I’ve heard the announcements on the 20 and the 75 (per the major stops). As I took my first ride on the 75 yesterday, and as I was preoccupied by my cat being freaked out (it was her first bus ride, full stop, and to the vet, no less), the announcement for the Powell stop, so clearly stated, was incredibly helpful. I know that some drivers speak the stops into their wee microphones as they are approaching, but in my near-year of bus riding here, I’ve only been able to actually hear one of these drivers – and I have excellent hearing. Thanks, TriMet, for improving upon our awesome public transit system! They’re not always on time, but at least I now know where we’re going on the bus.