Portland and Seattle

Portland was a lovely place to hang out for a few days, thanks to the lovely Shea and her housemates, and to Pike from SF, who helped keep us entertained for the whole time we were were there. Apart from the stereo total concert, I also went to a mid-week club night for some ass-shakin', (translation: dancing. I'm learning the local lingo, you see), went to 'First Thursday', when a lot of the little galleries in town open up and have exhibition openings or little shows or whatever, hung out in the Black Cat cafe in Alberta St for the free wi-fi and lovely iced coffee and bagels, went to the largest new & secondhand bookstore I think I've ever seen, and *still* didn't buy anything, rode around Chinatown and other bits of the city just to look, and made good use of Shea's professional skills as a piercer.
Yep. It's 9 years since I got my tongue pierced, so it was obviously time for some more holes in my body. So I got 2 new ones. But more about that later. I might even post photos when they've healed a little...
Random pic of hanging out in Portland, on one of their great steel girder bridges:


Friday night we drove to Seattle - the plan to stop in Olympia was cancelled when we accidentally missed the exit, and it was 9pm or something by then anyway. Staying outside Lindsey & Ash's place here, and they are also wonderfully welcoming, helpful people. Yesterday, by coincidence, Shea was coming to Seattle for a couple of hours to collect a friend, so the whole bunch of us went for a picnic in a park, which was lovely. And the food was all courtesy of a food bank that we visited in the morning. The food bank seems a wonderful thing in this city - it's like organised dumpstering. Shops and other food places donate the food that they can't sell, usually because it is past the sell-by date, but not past the use-by date, and anyone can come once a week (you have to register so they know who's been already that week) and take stuff for free. There are good and bad things, but when a lot of the good stuff, particularly in the 'vegetarian' section, is supplied by a natural foods deli of some sort, so we got artichoke salad and pesto and dips and all sorts of wonderful fancy things. And about half a kilo of macadamia nut pieces each! I think it's the bottom of a bulk lot, so it's sort of crushed nuts, but that's just perfect for sprinkling on my morning porridge, or for baking with bananas and cinnamon sugar, or for just eating with a spoon... Anyway, all this made for a wonderful - and free - picnic lunch. Thankyou Seattle!



And now I'm sitting in the rather wonderful Central Library, about which I had heard so much. Actually, I've heard a lot about a lot of Seattle, thanks to my regular reading of The Stranger. It's great to be able to explore it in person. Not to mention actually do some of the great things that get mentioned in it. Last night I went to 'LSD and other Drug Scare Films', which was a very entertaining way to spend an hour or two! And I picked up a paper copy of the newspaper I had only ever seen online. It was exciting. At least, I thought so!


So now I'm going to go now and explore more of this wonderful bit of public architecture. There's a book spiral here, where all the books are on one giant sloping floor that goes around 4 times - non-stop books!