Today I had the chance to explore Portland with a native of the city who doesn’t get out very much. We decided to explore the city on the Max, which is Portland’s light rail, and to my surprise (and pleasure) the rail allowed a pretty good view of Portland once we were past I-205, and it allowed me to ponder on the similarities between Portland and Pittsburgh as a river city near lines of beautiful green hills, as well as the contrasts between the culture of Portland and its suburbs, as well as the culture of Portland and other cities based on its urban design.

To begin, let me say that light rail is far more pleasant to travel than the bus system is. I would prefer it if light rail were self-sustaining (from the looks of my admittedly unscientific naturalistic observation today, there were a lot of college-age young adults and professionals on the light rail, including people who felt safe enough to nap on one of the routes), but at the same time it is not as if light rail is a ticket to bringing riff-raff into your city or neighborhood. Clearly, light rail would tend to funnel people along those routes, and it would appear that the connection between buses and trains is somewhat uneven (good at transfer stations, bad at regular routes), but that is not necessarily a bad thing, as downtown Portland in particular is pretty friendly to pedestrians.

My mission was first to find a particular cart in one of downtown Portland’s Cartlandias [1] that sold a highly rated fried chicken meal (the reviews were correct–the fried chicken and fries and biscuit with honey were great). I was hoping to also find a dessert cart that sold something pumpkin related, but I was not successful in the second goal, unfortunately. At any rate, the food was a success, even if there were way too many Thai carts in the Cartlandias of downtown Portland for my tastes. There are a lot of people in Portland who appear to have cravings for Thai food, but I am not one of them for the moment. I was definitely curious about some of the other carts, as well as some of the many ground-level restaurants in downtown. I always keep an eye out on food.

Portland has a variety of nicknames, some of which are rather puzzling to me. For example, Portland known by the tla (three-letter acronym) PDX. Apparently the term first came from the airport, and then grew in popularity from there, so that people in Portland often refer to themselves by such names as PDXpicker (to give one example of many). Portland is also known as the rose city, and it has a lot of “rose” themed buildings and areas. For example, the Portland Trail Blazers play in the Rose Garden, which reminds me of an old country song. Whenever Portland has a bad game, the announcer can sing, “I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden.” Only they did. Whoops. Never mind.

I also wanted to see Washington Park, where the zoo, forestry museum, and Japanese Gardens are located. Those are all places I’d like to explore in greater detail in the future, but the park was nice even if it was a bit cold and windy there, since it’s on the hills to the west of Portland. Other than that, the trip was full of lovely views of quirky architecture, a diverse population, and books (I managed to get to Powell’s bookstore, which is as large as advertised, and with an excellent selection of books, but which offered few bargains). And that’s an enjoyable and successful trip, at least as far as I’m concerned. There is much more to explore.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/exploring-cartlandia/