Places

[July 25th, 2007]

Best Place to Take in the Scenery

If a certain patch of spotty grass overlooking the industrial maze of Swan Island seems unremarkable to you, then you've probably showed up at the wrong time. Wait around until sunset on a nice day and you'll find scores of happy bicyclists and dog-walkers ogling the best view in town —unimpeded vistas of both Forest Park and Swan Island —while cracking open illicit Tecate tall boys and pitching Frisbees. This tiny off-the-map spot, according to a small sign at the park's entrance, was purchased with Metro Greenspace money in 1995, and although the city calls it Mocks Crest Property, you'd be hard-pressed to find NoPo'ers referring to it as anything but the Skidmore Bluffs . To get there, take North Skidmore all the way west until it ends, then roll on to the dead end of North Skidmore Terrace—once you're there, drop your bike and enjoy the view.

Best Reason Not to Go Postal

Amid the hustle and bustle of the Pearl District lies a small patch of greenery (no, not Tanner Springs). But if you blink, you just might miss it. That's because the Postal Corner Garden in front of downtown's Costco-sized main post office (715 NW Hoyt St., 525-5398) isn't that much bigger than a postage stamp itself. According to Kerry Jeffrey, the Post Office's customer relations coordinator, the smallish lot of rose bushes and assorted other flora situated at the corner of Northwest 9th Avenue and Hoyt Street is "a landscape spot our maintenance department takes care of." We can't think of a better spot in town to stamp and smell the roses.

Best Place to Seal a Letter with a REAL Kiss

If seeing someone lick the back of a postage stamp turns you on, there's no better place in town than The Independent Publishing Resource Center , or IPRC (917 SW Oak St. #218, 827-0249) to meet the pen pal of your dreams. Call them traditionalists, Luddites or just plain romantics: From 6 to 9 pm in the little space above Reading Frenzy, every first, second and fourth Thursday of the month, letter-writing junkies convene to craft hand-written quixotic missives to friends, strangers and lovers near and far. Leave your iPhone and T9 vocab at the door—this is where pen, paper, markers, crayons and imagination come out to play. Add this to IPRC's already hefty collection of obscure printing devices like the Japanese Gocco (an old-fashioned letterpress) and its pumped-up Apple G5s, featuring enough Adobe to build a sun-dried house in New Mexico, and you've got all the tools to put to paper just about anything your free-thinking cranium can conjure up.

Best Place To Land A latte

What has great shopping, efficient transport, stellar coffee, a famous bookstore and automated parking concentrated in one space? We're not talking about Portland's compact and celebrated city center this time around, but PDX, a.k.a. Portland International Airport, which Condé Nast readers chose as the nation's best in a 2006 readers' poll published in October. This might seem like no big deal, but after a decade of reconstruction that commenced in 2001, PDX has come a long way since the current terminal opened in 1958. Seriously: How many airports in America have speedy trains that make a beeline to downtown for two bucks? Or warm fondue (Gustav's), toasty baguettes (Caper's Cafe) and a wine bar (Rose City Wine Bar)? Or Powell's Books? Or an automated parking system that actually finds you a spot? Or free wireless Internet building-wide? Downtown Salem would kill for such amenities. While most airports are nothing but giant sterile boxes crammed with fast-food joints and chain-store trinkets, Portland International isn't a bad place to land. "We want to be the best at serving customers," says Port of Portland spokesperson Steve Johnson.

Best City to Visit...No, Really

Not long ago, Portland fell into the "nice place to live but wouldn't want to visit" category—a perennial livability chart topper, but hardly a savvy traveler's destination. How things have changed. The New York Times' travel section has profiled Portland six times since January and the Food Network named Portland the country's "Delicious Destination of the Year" in February, while a host of diverse national and international publications—including Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine and London's Financial Times—have featured PDX in high-gloss spreads in recent weeks. Is all the praise paying off? According to the reservations department at Hotel Lucia, the number of out-of-towners touring PDX from cities like New York and San Francisco has increased substantially. And when Portland's Holst Architecture completes its swanky renovation of the city's 180-room Days Inn, visitors will have another sweet sleeping space, and the national press something else to gush about.

Best Shelter from the Storm

It's raining. You're in Buckman. And you need a little inspiration. Duck into the "lighthouse" on Southeast Madison Street just before Southeast 21st Avenue . A colorful structure with a 5 1/2-foot-tall spire that evokes both calypso breezes and restless waves, the Lighthouse's benches welcomes sitters as they read community notices and poems on the corkboard. A little cove houses candles for use in impromptu vigils. A community project created by the Lighthouse Intentional Community, the City Repair Project and cobworks.com, the lighthouse is a little over a year old, and will stay up, according to Faddah Wolf, one of Lighthouse Intentional Community's founders, "as long as we're here." It's one of those accommodating nooks that make Portland what it is—and its residents glad they live here.

Best Use of "Under the Bridge" Since that Chili Peppers Song in the Early '90s

If you decide to head over to Northwest 21st or 23rd avenues from the Pearl by walking under I-405, something might catch your eye: the River District Community Garden (Northwest 16th Avenue between Johnson and Kearney streets). "No one expects something like that to be there; it's an asset for the neighborhood," says Matt Kruger, garden member and its unofficial "manager." The site is sponsored by several organizations, including the Zimmerman Community Center, the Pearl Rotary and many local businesses, but neighborhood residents are eligible to join in on the planting, weeding and nurturing in a 15-by-25-foot plot for a $50 annual fee. Always open to the public, the garden gets new benches this year, and would-be green thumbs are invited to check out the music, food and sculpture on display from 6-9 pm Thursday, Aug. 2, in celebration of how far the garden has come after its first year.