Pete McMartin: Portland, Vancouver's bolder sister
I cannot help but have a soft spot in my heart for Portland, if only for the fact that on the week my wife and I visited, the Give A Shit Club was holding its "mostly monthly" forum. In it, participants were encouraged to do "a little bit of drinking and a whole lot of talking about local and national issues."
Of Portland's nature, it's all there in the club's title:
The wry but earnest call to activism; the fine line trod between seriousness and self-satire; the slacker dynamic fuelled by local microbreweries and artisanal distilleries. It's at once twee yet not, fun but adult. Of the three Cascadia sisters - the other siblings being us and Seattle - Portland is the most amiable and adventurous. She'd be the older sister willing to try anything, the first one in the water skinny-dipping.
Consider for example, our hotel: We stayed downtown at the Ace, a restored - but not overly restored - hotel originally built in 1912. There is nothing like it in Vancouver, which is a pity. There easily could be.
It's Flophouse Chic, with claw-foot tubs in the bathrooms, double-height ceilings, original tiled lobby (complete with coin-operated photo booth), and turn-of-the-century oak flooring in the hallways and rooms. The old is set off by the hipsterish new: large-screen TVs, high-end toiletries and bedding, sleek minimalist furnishings, original wall murals in each room (above our bed was an American eagle with the inscription Love Thy Neighbor), and - in a nod to the vibrant local music scene - turntables that came with an eclectic supply of LPs. (Ours ranged from the newest Fleet Foxes LP to The Best of Caruso.) Even the room's mini-bars spoke Portlandese: It came stocked with Glee gum, Boy-lan lemon seltzer and banana bread powerbars. Sometimes I suspect Portland is in on its own joke.
Why would a Vancouverite go to Portland?
It does serendipity so much better than us. Some of this is due to a more relaxed licensing environment - getting a liquor or business licence is vastly easier than in B.C. But more than that, Portland is a showcase of the American genius for experimentation. The city's unofficial motto, and favoured bumper sticker, is Keep Portland Weird. It's that self-satire again, but a call to arms, too.
Case in point:
While we were there, the big indie rock band The Shins, who call Portland home, gave a 1 p.m. children's concert at the Kennedy School. The show was part of the charming You Who! concert series, co-founded by Chris Funk of the Decemberists, Portland's other big indie band.
The shows are split up into a half-hour of variety entertainment - sin-galongs, cartoons, puppetry, "inter-active dance get-downs," to quote the program - followed by a half-hour rock show.
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Pete McMartin: Portland, Vancouver's bolder sister