Neighborhood:
Old Town/Chinatown From the Abercrombie-clad youth who crowd Barracuda ((read more),Portland,OR">9 NW 2nd Ave., 228-6900) and the hipsters hiding out at Tube (18 NW 3rd Ave., 241-8823) to the punks at thrash-dive Satyricon (125 NW 6th Ave.), Old Town-Chinatown—a onetime center of immigrant culture—is now more a melting pot of twentysomething white-kid cliques. Stumble down Burnside from the classic arcade game-equipped bar Ground Kontrol (511 NW Couch St., 796-9364) to tasty, funky 24-hour Voodoo Doughnut (22 SW 3rd Ave., 241-4704), and you’ll probably cross paths with stylish queer clubbers on their way to gay nightspot CC Slaughters (219 NW Davis St., 248-9135) or Darcelle XV (208 NW 3rd Ave., 222-5338), a drag-queen cabaret in operation since 1967 that actually serves a fairly even hetero-homo mix—which would be surprising if it weren’t in Portland. But nightlife is only part of this eclectic neighborhood. Thanks to a grant from the Portland Development Commission, local nonprofit juggernaut Mercy Corps (3015 SW 1st Ave., 796-6800) is moving into the Skidmore Fountain Building (28 SW 1st Ave.), right next door to Portland Saturday Market (Southwest 1st Avenue and Burnside Street, 222-6072), a weekend meeting place for curious, hungry tourists, local artists, cart foodies and street kids. Chinatown is also home to the run-down and the sketched-out. Operations like Portland Rescue Mission, Blanchet House and Transition Projects have long made the ’hood a haven for Portland’s homeless. But where are the Chinese, you ask? Despite the gaudy, pagoda-style gateway to Northwest 4th Avenue from West Burnside Street, the only remnants of the Chinese Americans who migrated to Portland when they were expelled from Seattle and Tacoma beginning in 1864 are the two dozen or so Chinese restaurants. Try the roast crispy pork at Good Taste Restaurant (18 NW 4th Ave., 223-3838) and visit the Classical Chinese Garden (239 NW Everett St., 228-8131), a welcome but hidden green space in this otherwise paved-over neighborhood. —John Minervini.
