Keep Portland weird

Cities aren’t really my thing. I’ve lived in them, passed through them, visited them – but I can’t say I actively seek them out. Give me wide open spaces and nature any day.

A vegan joint caught my eye in one corner of the city, until I realised that it was actually a vegan-themed strip club

So if it weren’t for the fact that I was attending a conference in Portland I think it’s pretty safe to say I would never have had the opportunity to check out Oregon’s City of Roses, one of the most populous cities in the Pacific Northwest, some 1,000km north of San Francisco.

Emerging from my room on the 17th floor of a towering hotel block I peered out over the slowly waking city. It was raining.

It was also looking rather chilly down there on the water slicked streets. People scurried about like ants below, heads bent, heading for their first coffee hit of the morning.

I soon joined them, ducking in and out of shop fronts as I made my way to breakfast at what I had been assured was a Portland ‘must see’ – Voodoo Doughnuts.

A bearded man stood in the middle of my path, muttering to himself and swigging from a bottle of beer.

Further down the road I manoeuvr­ed around a person of unknown gender (such was the swaddling of clothing) pushing a shopping cart piled high with plastic bags. It was muttering as well.

A huge pink sign heralded my approach: Voodoo Doughnut – The Magic is in the Hole, the sign proclaimed. Indeed.

Inside, doughnuts of every size and description whirled around in display cases, covered in chocolate, creams, sprinkles and sugary concoctions – presided over by doughnuts shaped like voodoo dolls (each apparently encompassing a tasty raspberry filling).

I purchased a Diablos Rex (chocolate doughnut with a pink pentagram) and the Old Dirty B*****d (chocolate doughnut loaded with cookie crumbles and peanut butter), snagged a coffee from across the street and trotted down to the river to consume my sugar fix while a flock of aggressive seagulls attempted to relieve me of my food.

Now on a major sugar high, I headed up street, towards Powell’s Books – a truly gigantic book store that took up an entire city block.

Around me bookshelves loomed, crowded with what appeared to be every book ever written. I wandered the aisles, up and down stairs to different floors, following maps to an endless array of rooms, feeling a little like I should have been wearing a miner’s lamp.

After an hour of perusing the shelves, and clutching a couple of purchases, I headed back out into the streets where the rain had let up, sunlight filtering down from above.

Portland’s motto is Keep Portland Weird, and it certainly exudes a strange sort of charm. This is the city that spawned the TV series Portlandia, a satirical and decidedly odd comedy about life in Portland and its surroundings. You can see where the series creators get their inspiration from, what with attractions like the aforementioned doughnut shop.

Apart from the muttering drunks to keep one entertained, there was street art aplenty – a wide range of statues of mixed lineage scattered about the parks, an entire street side made of brightly painted doors and roadside musicians hither and yon.

Heading to one of Portland’s many bars that evening I passed someone playing a large array of upturned buckets as drums.

When I passed him by several hours later I had to navigate through the impromptu dance party that now surrounded him, their members launching into an intricate choreographed dance routine that put me in mind of Michael’s Jackson’s Thriller. Shuddering to myself at that thought I moved on.

I wandered into the Made in Portland store to see what the owners thought encapsulated Portland life – T-shirts with hairy sasquatches (apparently Yetis roam the surrounding mountains), some remarkably fine wines from surrounding vineyards and various micro-brewery offerings.

Indeed, Portland is known for its wide selection of microbreweries (another local motto is Keep Portland Beered) and you can work your way through a huge range of them over the course of the night if you are so inclined – sampling offerings by the Hair of the Dog brewery, Rogue Ales and Amnesia Brewing.

There are 32 breweries all clustered around downtown Portland, and by the end of the night you could easily join the ranks of the muttering drunks yourself if you aren’t careful.

Food is another draw in Portland. The city has a wide range of restaurants to suit every taste, from ritzy bistros to outdoor markets and food carts selling everything from English fish and chips to Lebanese fare, Mexican enchiladas to vegetarian grills.

A vegan joint caught my eye in one corner of the city, until I realised that it was actually a vegan-themed strip club. I decided that even for this article I couldn’t quite bring myself to investigate, though I remain to this day intrigued by what that unearthly combination could possibly mean.

Food and beer notwithstanding, Portland has a huge range of sights and sounds on offer. Several spacious parks and gardens are located within walking distance of the city centre, while the huge Willamette River trundles through the city on its way out to the Pacific.

Portland’s also a great launch pad to some of Oregon’s greatest sights and sounds. Mount Hood, looming up to 3,425 metres, has year-round snow (for the snowboard and skiing buffs among you) and a slew of hiking trails, alpine lakes, evergreen forests and campsites.

The Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area is home to cascading waterfalls, an excellent array of wineries, and the chance to catch some wind- or kite-surfing on the Hood River.

If wine is your thing, you can spend many a day meandering through the various wineries of Washington County and Yamhill Valley.

Striking a little further afield, one can reach the Oregon coast in a few hours for some surfing or whale watching (in the right season), tucking into clam chowder, crabs or shrimp to keep you feeling fortified.

As another day drew to a close, I settled into a warm pub with a live jazz band and chugged on a rather excellent coffee-flavoured stout.

Outside, another bearded mutterer sloped by, gesturing towards the skies. Keep Portland Weird seemed like a pretty accurate motto to me I thought as I watched him stumble by, hollering unintelligibly.

And then I returned to contemplating the beer menu.