What Portland experience would be complete without a trip to Powell’s Books? I try not to go too often, my shelves are already sagging with books. But this weekend I made the journey downtown to the city-block sized book mecca. I checked out the Rare Book room, which was a first for me. Lots of leather bound volumes with large numbers on their price tags. After wandering around the stacks I picked up a copy of Salvador Placensia’s “The People of Paper.” (I’d given my copy to friend and have been meaning to reread it) and Italo Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller.”
Afterwards I walked to a nearby pod of food-carts and had the burrito of Greece, the gyro. The food cart scene in Portland is exploding, it’s like somebody looked at a mall food court and asked, how can we make this not suck? Enter pods of food carts. Hundreds of trucks offering varying types of cuisine. There are a lot of options and it’s always a hard choice, each bite tastes like regret for the cart not picked. Though my gyro was delicious.
Recently Portland has made the news for a lack of ambition. Full article here. (From my experience I tend to agree with the underemployment in Portland). In keeping with that, today was probably the most Portland day I could picture, the proper mix of idleness and activity.