PORTLAND HOBBY FOR CITY SLICKERS

A Portland hobby is what suburban living turns into.

“Let’s go downtown and take a spin around the river,” means one thing:

Park in the garage near the Hawthorne Bridge, walk over to the Eastside promenade / Eastbank Esplanade, cross the Steel Bridge, and walk up Waterfront Park.

The eastside walk puts a good light on Portland across the Willamette.

It looks like a clean city from there. Take a picture for your friends.

Out of town adventurers looking for a Portland hobby can move a few streets up and walk Broadway from the Portland State campus to the Broadway Bridge.

It’s more challenging, more people, more curbs and sidewalks.

In other words, more city. Take the river walk instead.

The idea of a Portland hobby is civic participation.

Find something you like doing in Portland and do it.

Owning Portland Again

For every naked bike ride, brew festival, and just a walk around Portland’s famous small city blocks, there’s a current threat.

Some toothless, jacked up, meth addict could leap out of the shadows ruin whatever plans you had for the day.

No one wants that. I don’t, you don’t, no one wants that.

But you don’t have to go to Portland for that. Instead, take a walk down the side street near my house.

There’s a house on the road that’s been S.W.A.T. ed. Twice.

When I forget to shut the gate my dog runs down there. Now I walk her there on a leash so she knows the way home.

Yesterday a guy from the house came out and asked if I was lost.

Did I say I was looking to hook up some meth, like the woman left on the street outside their house unconscious?

No, I didn’t. I said I was a neighbor, but the guy didn’t make any connections.

He’s been driving by my house for ten of the twenty years I’ve lived there, driven past me on the sidewalk, but I was a stranger. We don’t wave.

The truth is I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup either.

My point is that drug houses and drug house behavior don’t stop at the city limits anywhere.

And it’s not all out on 82nd.

New Portland Hobby For The Holidays

A buddy of mine left town, leaving me with no friends to do what he and I did.

We shot hoops, drank beer, played guitars. We even had a party gig that was a screaming success.

He was the second best musician I’ve ever played with. The best was an old banjo player from the old school.

We had a Christmas tradition of shopping for our wives with their blessings.

It felt like a special time of just being guys walking around looking to impress our wives with our sensitive side.

The first stop was Pioneer Place Mall.

The last stop was Mary’s on Broadway before it moved.

Why a strip club, and why Mary’s?

Because my pal and I were hardcore city slickers for one night.

Instead of suburban dad dudes, we were bad boys doing good things.

A large group of men and women came in one time, sat in the back, and put a dollar on stage.

Ten office workers with one dollar. Some people have no manners, like the guy in this link.

The stripper called them out. My pal and I heckled them until a ten dollar bill showed up.

That got the place hopping.

People stood up to dance with the dancer and poured money onto the stage. The middle-aged bartender whipped her shirt up to show her grannie bra.

If you can start the holiday spirit any better than that, along with a nice tea pot from Teavana before it closed, I want to know.

Without my upstanding pal to sleaze around with, I’ve got no one left, except:

Family Holiday Fun In Portland

When my kids were small we took them downtown for a special treat: Good Dog, Bad Dog.

Followed by a walk around Pioneer Place to look at the tree.

Now that they’re all grown up men we’ve been visiting Huber’s.

In a group of three husbands and three wives, we rolled into a booth in back.

It’s a good night if things get rowdy, words fly, drinks drank, and all apologies are accepted.

It’s not heckling losers in nice clothes at a strip bar sort of fun, but still heart warming.

The brides are lovely, the men sturdy, and together at the city Christmas tree afterwards feels like something out of a Dickens novel for modern times.

Find something worth doing in Portland, find a Portland hobby, copy mine, and work with it.

It’s your city, too. Make a reservation. Get in there.

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Learn something.