Portland Spice

A funny thing happened to me today. At least I thought it was funny.

I was walking home on the park blocks today when two twenty-something women in a small white car stopped and rolled down the window.

"Excuse me," the brunette riding shotgun said, "do you know where Spice is?"

I thought for a second. "No," I replied. I'd never heard of it. "Is that a restaurant?" I asked her.

"Umm," she looked at me, chuckled and said, "no, it's a strip club. . ." and then they pulled away. 

At first I was a little embarrassed that I couldn't help her. Then I thought about it and realized it was probably a good thing that I couldn't.

It made me laugh all the way home. 

Is it the Coffee or Is it the Café?

In my travels around the area, I have found that there are two main types of café. The first type is focused on the coffee. Places like Barista, Coava, Nor’West, Ristretto, Extracto and Heart, some of which I have yet to visit, are run by coffee purists. These people want the coffee to always be at its top form. If you ask a question about their coffee, they can tell you about the coffee’s origin, its roasting profile and all of the subtle flavors it has. They can list you their top five favorite coffees of all time, who the leaders of the specialty coffee industry are, what makes a single-origin espresso unique, etc. Above all else, the owners and employees of these cafés care about coffee quality and they want you to share their passion.

The second type of café is focused more on the café experience. Palio or Caffè Umbria are examples of cafés that fall into this category. Coffee is important—no question about it—but these cafes want to be a meeting place for more people, a place where students, writers, and bloggers go to study or write. They often have a wider food menu or more comfortable surroundings. Some people are really drawn to one type of café or the other. Before I started to learn about specialty coffee, I would have said I preferred the café experience (as long as the coffee was drinkable). After talking to the coffee enthusiasts, I now appreciate both types.

How about you? Are there other types of cafés that you like to visit? Are you a regular at a certain café? Why do you like that particular one so much?

Artists Hit the Right Notes

It was a beautiful crisp fall day here in Portland yesterday. After rushing to get a week’s worth of laundry done, I needed to get out of the house and go look for stories (and of course, some good coffee). When I walked outside, I noticed two things: First, it was much cooler outside than the day before—fall is here—and I was glad I had elected to wear my fleece. Second, I could hear an outdoor concert taking place at the PSU campus. That piqued my interest, and I decided to go listen for a while.

It’s pretty common to have lunchtime concerts at PSU. They usually take place once a week, weather permitting. I’m not sure who decides what group gets to play on stage in the commons, but the concert series is a great opportunity to perform and be heard by anywhere from several hundred to a couple thousand people. Up and coming bands who are looking for exposure can put their music out into the public eye (ear, rather) and see what kind of reaction they get. As you can imagine, the talent level and quality of the music varies greatly from week to week.

I have listened to many of these concerts over the past two years, and I like to watch how the crowd reacts to each band. Most of the time, people sit down for a couple minutes and then move on (if they even stop in the first place). Once in a while the band is good enough that the crowd grows over the hour, but most of the time the people don’t stay around for long. They’ve got too much to do, and the music is not compelling enough to keep them around (Hmm. . . sounds kind of like blogging). Sometimes you can tell that a band has brought a core group of followers—they stand up close to the stage and dance or applaud wildly after each piece.

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Caffè Umbria

With its high ceilings, large windows, hardwood trim and modern chairs, Caffè Umbria fits in well in the heart of Portland’s Pearl District. The modern coffee bar, decked out in brushed stainless steel, contrasts with the antique pottery sitting on top of it. These elements, modern and antique, combine to give the café an new-world feel with just a bit of the old.

At the corner of 12th and Everett

Caffè Umbria is a Seattle-based coffee company that has “invaded” the Portland coffee scene.

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Nor'West Coffee

My quest to find good coffee took me outside the city limits the other day. I traveled up the I-5 corridor from a city who’s catchphrase is “Keep Portland weird!” to a city that likes to say “Keep Vancouver normal.” While the cultures of the two cities are very different, one thing they share (besides the rain) is good coffee. Before any Portlanders reading this get upset, I want to make it clear that I’m not implying the two are coffee equals. So far, Portland has a clear lead. In fact, until the other day I didn’t even know that Vancouver was competitive.

However, yesterday a friend of mine from Vancouver, Tim Downing, introduced me to Nor’West Coffee and I found that there are a few coffee experts in the state to our north as well. Nor’West is a café that has been around for nearly three years. After roasting his own coffee for about seven years, Mike McGinness, the owner, began roasting commercially three years ago under the name Compass Coffee. The company has three retail outlets—one in downtown Vancouver (Compass Coffee), one in North Vancouver (Nor’West) and one in Beaverton (Java Nation) that it acquired three months ago.

Nor'West Coffee

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Seen Around PDX

Here are a few things I saw around town the last couple days. 

The Hawthorne BridgeBetween the blue sky and the blue water, I couldn't resist taking a picture.

At PSUBattles with (foam-covered) medieval weaponry. A PSU physical education class, perhaps?

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China’s National Day

It has been a while since I talked about China, so today is a good day to return to the subject. October 1^st is a very important day on the Chinese calendar. It is the day that China celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China, which happened in 1949 in a ceremony at Tiananmen Square.

Schools close for a week and many people travel to their hometowns to visit family and celebrate together. The Chinese government celebrates the day by organizing fireworks displays and other festivities, including turning Tiananmen Square into a huge flower garden (I hope the video loads more quickly for you than it did for me). This year China also launched a satellite to the moon on the same day. China wants to send astronauts to the moon and this mission was to test some of the technologies for that.

This year’s events did not receive the attention that last year’s did. Last year was the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the republic, and the government put on a huge military parade on Changan Lu (Long Peace Road, ironically), showing off all of the new military hardware that China has developed in-country. It was a display of strength that made a great story for western media outlets looking to portray China’s military as a growing threat. Some, however, argued it also displayed weakness, since the Chinese government did not let Beijing residents anywhere near the parade, lest they disrupt the carefully-planned event. Whichever side you agree with, the scenes of tanks, trucks, armored personnel vehicles and thousands of soldiers passing in formation past Tiananmen Gate under the approving eyes of President Hu Jintao were striking.