October 21, 2011

Uphill Battle

When I think of San Francisco, I think of hills. When I thought of Seattle, I thought…water? Space Needle? Grunge? I don’t think I thought of hills, but boy, I wish I had. This city is like one freakin’ ginormous hill! I’m staying up in Capitol Hill, which is a cool area, but yesterday I walked down into downtown and yes, it really is “down” town…all down hill there, all up hill back! And we’re talking serious San Fran hills, although without the steps cut into the pavements, or sidewalks as Americans call them. Who knew? Well, maybe everybody else knew, but I certainly didn’t!

I’m not really sure what sort of bicyclist community they have in Seattle. I have noticed a few people riding around, although nothing compared to Portland. And I can understand why. Portland has really made an effort in terms of their city planning to encourage cycling and cyclists: bicycle lanes, bike parking EVERYWHERE, etc. and Portland is mostly flat. Apparently 7% of their population cycles to work, compared with the national urban average of 1%. Seattle, I think, is moving in that direction, but man, personally, unless I knew the routes to avoid the more serious hills, or just didn’t need to go downtown, I…dare I say it. I couldn’t do it. Car or bus, me thinks. I wonder what the bus system is like…

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October 21, 2011

The Dream is Alive in Portland

There’s a song in the show “Portlandia” with lyrics along the lines of “The Dream of the 90s is Alive in Portland.” While this very well might be true, I would have to say that the Liberal dream is alive and well in Portland as well. Last night, I met up with N at the Bagdad Theatre in SE Portland. It’s a second run movie theatre in an incredible old building with a brewpub attached run by McMenamins. McMenamins seems to be at the crosssection of beer and the Grateful Dead. We went to see a documentary and presentation about the proposed mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Bristol Bay is home to the largest salmon run in the world, and Pebble Consortium is trying to build a 15 sq mile mine in the area. The residents are, needless to say, fighting this mine as everyone is rightfully afraid that at some point there will be water contamination and that will be the end to the salmon run. There was a question and answer period after the film and as the MC talked about bringing the film and panel around the country they were sure they would get a good reception in Portland where “the dream is alive.” There were whistles and claps to this comment. The audience was filled with liberals, ever distrustful of the man, ever loyal to the cause, and who love to hear themselves speak. Have you ever heard of a Q&A session where the questions were more like…well, comments. Or diatribes? Yes, this was one of those. Actually, I exaggerate…but nevertheless I don’t think there’s any worry about Portland ever becoming a red city. Unless we’re talking commie red…

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October 17, 2011

Where do People in Portland Buy their Drugs?

I would have more appropriately written their pharmaceutical needs, but that wouldn’t have had quite the ring to it. In Manhattan, you can’t walk a block before passing a Duane Reade, CVS, or Walgreens pharmacy. It used to be Starbucks, then it was Banks and now it seems to be pharmacies. In Portland, and even in Austin, this is certainly not the case. I ran out of floss upon arriving in Portland and have been hoping to just stumble across one. To no avail. I was about to give up my dental hygiene for the rest of my time in this city until low and behold a massive Walgreens appeared around the corner. My dentist I’m sure will be appreciative.

Portland prides itself on its urban planning and its transportation. Today, I walked into a new neighborhood to check out this artists open studios thing that was going on. To paint a picture, the neighborhood reminded me a bit of Bushwick in Brooklyn, or to those not familiar, it was lots of low industrial buildings, lots of emptiness. Growing up in New York City, I learned that it was always safer to be somewhere where people are, so emptiness can often connote danger for me. I decided that I would leave said new neighborhood and head into town so found my way to a bus stop and waited. Bus 20 was the bus that I was waiting for. I waited about 10 minutes until Bus 12 came along. I took it a few stops to the other side of the river and then walked to the 20 stop. I thought I would wait a bit as I was going pretty far west and it couldn’t be that far behind…I waited, made a few phone calls, waited some more. Finally, after 20 minutes I gave up and walked.

The problem is that Portland, while it has many bus routes, seems like Brooklyn. Just as its quite difficult to get a direct subway route from one part of Brooklyn to another without first going back into Manhattan, it’s hard to go from one part of Portland to another without going through downtown. I noticed in Austin that they seriously favoured North/South bus routes over East/West. It was virtually impossible to catch a bus in that direction! You walked it or you just didn’t go. In Portland, they all seem to run North/South as well with very few connecting the more western parts of the city. Now, I know that public transportation is one of my pet peeves and maybe in another life I could be a brilliant urban planner, but is it really too much to expect? A  reasonable bus journey even on a Sunday? Apparently yes, it is…

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October 16, 2011

Shining Light Through the Grey

Portland feels familiar somehow. I’m not sure whether it’s that the downtown is really a downtown according to my North Eastern city planning sensibilities, or that the trees feel like Hampstead Heath trees, or whether it’s just that the weather is ridiculously like London’s. I arrived to what everyone tells me is a typical Portland day weather wise, grey and drizzling on and off all day. Feels like home to me! The air has that crisp Autumn feel and smell to it that kind of makes my heart sing and the trees and lawns all glisten with so much moisture they might just burst. Today the sun came out for the afternoon and it felt just like London on a sunny day.

So it seems Portland has really gone out of its way to welcome me, what with the weather and then an unexpected quirky Portlandy art event last night called Shine a Light at the Portland Art Museum. It was took place from 10am-midnight, although most of the events happened from 6pm onwards. There were all sorts of things going on such as ballet, comedy, poetry, line dancing, break dancing, and people even getting tattoos with artwork based on the collection. I participated in a piece called “Session With a Stranger.” In a ballroom (strange that an art museum should have a ballroom, but hey! what do I know?), I was paired off with a stranger, given a beer (a Session beer, hence the name), a coaster and a piece of paper that had conversational starting questions and a blurb on the back:

‘I believe that having something new happen, no

matter how small is what makes for a healthy day,

no matter how many days are left.’

-David Greenberger

…This project by Adam Moser and Jason Sturgil takes their individual interest in

work by artists from a pervious generation and combines and plays off their

ideas to form something new. Specifically ‘Drinking  Beer with Friends is The

Highest Form of Art’ by Tom Marioni and the various questionnaire works by

Don Calender including his 1975 piece ‘Opinions of Working People Concerning the Arts.’

My stranger was from New York! Upper West Side! What a coincidence. I guess I would have to go really far beyond before I can get away from running into New Yorkers. Really sweet guy living in Portland for uni, majoring in art history who spent the last semester in Italy in culinary school. We got a good chat in and I dare say he’s not a stranger anymore.

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October 14, 2011

Whip in

Because modern technology is awesome…for a price, I am writing this entry from 28,000 feet above Texas. I am en route from Dallas Ft. Worth to Portland, Oregon, the next stop on the trip. The flight from Austin to Dallas was a ridiculously short half hour and despite the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport being the size of a small city, all is well and I am enjoying the extra leg room of the exit row as I head from one end of the country to another. From one extreme climate to another (90s to 50s!)

Austin ended on an excellently Austin-y note. Last night I met up with J. She recommended we go to a wine bar. Now the words wine bar conjure up an image in my mind of a dark room, lit by candles on low set tables, maybe some soft furnishing with couples canoodling in corners and maybe a few stuffy wine patrons sitting at the bar discussing the pros and cons of a malbec with the overly knowledgeable bartenders. But this is Austin…So instead when she told me the name of the bar was called the Whip In, I recalled passing a rather tacky looking signed bar just a few doors down from my hotel along the huge interstate, I-35. Really? I said. And away we went.

Outside the sign said “Wine, Beer, Groceries” and that pretty much sums it up. Along one long wall stood a bar serving 60 beers on tap, God knows how many wines and vegetarian food. Most of the rest of the inside was a grocery store, selling bottles of what they sold by the glass behind the bar as well as your staple foods, some cereal, ice cream, gourmet spreads as well as your Reece’s peanut butter cups and Boars Head deli meat and cheese. And in the corner was an area of live music. I was hugely excited by the Whip In! Grocery store/bar!? We got our drinks and headed outside where there were communal picnic tables in an porch area with a bandstand with two bands playing over the course of the evening. A cool breeze blew threw, an utterly hip rockabilly band played Monster Mash and other kid songs for the little toddler who was running wild and I had the perfect send off from Austin.

Texas, I salute you!

Oregon, I await you!

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October 13, 2011

Feelin’ hot hot hot…

Oh yes. You thought you might escape my stay in Texas without a reference to the weather, but you were wrong! Texas is hot! Austin is hot! And the amazing thing is apparently this is nothing. It’s been about 90 degrees the last couple of days and when I was speaking to someone yesterday about Austin, Houston and Texas in general and they said something along the lines of “God, the weather in Houston is terrible!” I couldn’t help but think, if Houston is terrible, what’s this?

The truth is that the weather has been lovely. It did rain on Saturday, which everyone says was a great thing as Texas has been in one of the worst droughts in years. But other than that, it’s been sunny and hot. Something has happened to me after all my time living in London. I’ve become so British that I love talking about the weather. Oh, a good complaint here or there about the heat or the cold or the wind and rain fits quite nicely with me. Writing this post I feel quite at ease.

But getting back to the point at hand, one of the perks of the weather here is getting to spend so much time outdoors. Practically every cafe and restaurant has an outdoor covered space full of people hanging out, drinking their coffee, typing away on their laptops (because obviously every coffee house has to have wifi), flashing their tattoos and talking. I had forgotten how Americans love to talk. Well, mostly Americans outside of New York City. I’ve sat down at communal tables and soon am besties with the people next to me. I’m enjoying my culture shock.

 

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October 12, 2011

Keep Austin Weird

So goes the Austin city motto. I guess it’s a play off “Keep Texas Wild,” which I think is pretty awesome as well. And Austin does its best to keep to its motto. Apparently someone even ran for major of Austin with that as his campaign slogan.

I had big plans to upload some photos and show off some of Austin’s weirdness, but unfortunately for me and for you, I left my cable back in New York, so no photos for this blog! I shall have to paint with words instead.

Possibly the weirdest thing that I’ve discovered in Austin thus far is Oasis, Texas. Listed in my guidebook as a great place to see the sunset, D and I drove about a half hour outside of town to discover something that resembled a ghost town. Perched on the edge of Lake Travis with some truly amazing views, Oasis, Texas is a ghost town theme park. There were about twenty or more vacant retail spaces in a complex that resembled the Texas version of a ski chalet. Dotted amongst this craziness were bronze sculptures depicting everything from a monkey astride a giant banana to a large state of Texas with Austin’s skyline atop. Weird.

Yesterday morning I was walking into town and saw some vultures chowing down on some roadkill. Weird.

Just outside the State Capital building is a large granite headstone with the 10 Commandments inscribed on it. Weird.

And just this evening I watched the sunset over the Congress Avenue bridge as thousands of bats flew out into the night. Each summer these bats use the underside of the bridge as their home and each evening as the sun sets in the west they begin their flight for food. Very werid.

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October 10, 2011

Who Rides the Bus?

Back in 2004 or 2005 I went to visit a friend who was living in L.A. I didn’t rent a car, because mostly I hung out with said friend who had one. One day she was busy, so I went somewhere, I can’t remember and took…the bus. Yes, that’s right, I took the bus in L.A. As I waited at the bus stop I made friends with a crazy lawyer whose car was in repair and was therefore taking the bus. He was so upset at this prospect that he announced he had had to take a Valium before leaving his house. He couldn’t believe he was taking the bus. He couldn’t understand why I was taking the bus either. “Who would take the bus?” he asked, as did another lady who I befriended. I can’t remember her reason for taking the bus, but I think she was equally distressed.

And yet people take the bus every day in L.A. and seem to take the bus every day in Austin too. I am constantly reminded that public transportation, despite everyone’s protests, serve a certain section of the population. People who can’t afford to own a car. While there certainly isn’t the class system in this country that there is in England, there’s a different sort of class system, one based on economic earnings. And that is so clear in the demographics of people who ride the bus. I am finding out a completely different side of Austin than if I were to just drive around in a rental. I’m enjoying it! It’s driving me crazy (the waiting for the buses and trying to figure out what line goes where), but it’s all an adventure.

Now for some random thoughts about Austin:

They have fiesty squirrels.

Everything really is bigger in Texas (photos to come later)

People love to eat out with their dogs.

Tattoos are everywhere!

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October 9, 2011

America Without a Car

This was my goal. No, this is my goal. Maybe I’ve lived in London and New York City for too long, or maybe I’m just an idealist, but I don’t want to live my life in a car. I don’t want to rely on a car to live my life. I don’t want to be one of these people who walks down their driveway, gets in their car, drives to work, spends 8 hours indoors at work, drives home and then walks back into their house. That sounds like living death to me.

However, everyone I speak with, from New York to Seattle, seems to scoff at my idea. Is this more about them or more about me? Is it really pie in the sky thinking to want to live somewhere in the US without a car? Was Texas maybe the wrong place to start? Austin seems all sorts of spread out and even the side streets seem big.

And so I am already considering renting a car and breaking my practically number one rule on this trip. Partially this is because I am staying at a motel in Austin that is not in downtown. It’s actually a good 15 minute walk into the southern end of “SoCo,” South Congress Avenue, a funky area of town. It’s then another 2 miles into what’s considered downtown Austin. Not ideal. Partially, I guess I could look at all the neighborhoods that if I were to move here, I might be interested in living in.

Well, I guess for today I don’t have to worry about it. I’m back in my motel room and watching the rain bucket down. Feels a bit like London, except the temperature is in the 90sF. I sit here in air conditioning and ponder my next day without a car. Wish me luck!

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October 7, 2011

Goldilocks and the Three Politicians

Today’s post was going to be a geography lesson from the point of view of a New Yorker. Instead it’s going to be about meeting President Bill Clinton!

My parents, more specifically my mother, is involved with an organisation called People For the American Way, or as they like to call themselves, People For. They promote progressive, (no one apparently likes calling themselves liberal these days) politics and politicians. Last night was the 30th birthday celebration of the organisation and I tagged along to the cocktail party.

To set the scene, it was in this building on Central Park West and the beginning of the night started in an apartment on the 38th floor with views that are beyond words. We could see across the Park and well into Queens, and on the other side we could see well into Jersey. It was a view to make me change my mind about living in New York (if I could live in that flat!)

Anyway, from there, this ridiculous apartment building gets better. The cocktail party took place in the private courtyard with food and drink catered by the private chef. There was a fountain in the middle of the courtyard and what I thought was an illusion turned out to be a pool in the basement reflected through the glass floor of the fountain. Amidst all this opulence Alec Baldwin spoke about Occupy Wall Street and Norman Lear introduced…Mr. Bill Clinton.

Part of the introduction went something like, “to know him for four minutes is to love him,” and damn it is true. Whatever someone might say about his personal life, he is an incredibly charismatic man. He spoke eloquently about politics and American society about the importance of shared responsibility and lots of other things that my mind has now blanked on as I was so in awe! His soft twang hooked me in and then his ideas kept me there. Sigh…

I did get to shake the man’s hand and it was the perfect Goldilocks handshake. Not too firm, not too soft. I didn’t get the politician’s elbow grab, but he looked me straight in the eye when he shook my hand and I can safely say I had sweet dreams last night.

I leave tomorrow early morning for Austin and so, I will leave you with a very short geography lesson to ponder while I am in the air. This is a map of how New Yorker’s see the US. Enjoy!


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