Portland, Oregon
It’s a five-and-a-half hour drive to Portland from Vancouver, unless you stop in Seattle for a meatball sandwich at Salumi. Then you might need a nap and some quiet time to reflect on how you’ve been wasting your life, eating other things.
Portland will always hold a special place in my heart, it being the city that gave me my wedding suit.
There are as many reasons to visit Portland as there are beards in the Pearl district. Shopping for books at Powell’s. The chicken wings at Pok Pok. A three course meal for thirty-four dollars at Sympatica catering. Menswear at Winn Perry. Tax-free shopping at Filson.
But my favourite part of Portland is that despite its reputation as a hotbed for knowledge workers, there’s a strong sense throughout the city that people there still build things by hand. One of the best examples of this are the distilleries popping up in old factories, such as New Deal and House Spirits Distillery. Befitting a place so synonymous with coffee, the coffee liquor at the latter is astounding.
Portland? No, a labour corps during World War I.
