After breakfast, we bid a fond farewell to Mark and Bev, George and Terri, and the Clackamas River House. We still had one more night to spend in Portland, but Mark and Bev had another guest coming in, so we had to move out. We relocated to a Super 8 Motel in Gresham, a town east of Portland. A bit of a step down from the B&B, but it was clean and comfortable, if small and uninteresting.
After that, we killed some time by driving around a while, and had lunch at a very nice Greek deli. And then we went on an "Underground Portland Tour." We expected that it would be like the Underground Seattle tour that we took a few years ago. But in fact, it was more "underground" as in shady and scandalous than physically underground.
There are, in fact, a number of underground tunnels in Portland. They were mostly built in the 1800s, mostly for moving cargo in from ships, and for moving goods between buildings. Later, they were found to be good for flood control. And later, of course, they were found to be very good for getting away from the police. So now, most of them have been filled in and/or blocked off. But a few remnants still exist.
We met our tour guide, Herb:
...who led us all around downtown Portland for about 2-1/2 hours, regaling us with stories about the less savory - and therefore, of course, terribly interesting - incidents of Portland history. Of course, I can't remember all of them, and you wouldn't have the patience to read about them all if I did. But here are a few tidbits.
As I said, a few remnants of tunnels still exist. Herb led us into the office of a graphic design company, and down into the basement, where we saw a remnant. Over in a corner, there was a entrance to a tunnel:
...which, as you can see, is blocked off a few feet back from the entrance.
Herb led us through Portland's Chinatown, which he told us has Chinese restaurants, Chinese gift shops, Chinese herb shops... everything, in fact, but Chinese people. The Chinese population has mostly moved to other parts of town, and a lot of the businesses in Chinatown are owned by people of other nationalities. We visited an herb shop:
...which is owned by an Iranian. Only in America...
How many of you have been to a McCormick and Schmick seafood restaurant? Well, here's the original M & S, right there in downtown Portland:
Alas, it recently closed down.
Of course, being located at the confluence of two major rivers, Portland occasionally has floods. Here, Herb shows us highwater marks from two of them:
Anyone remember this poster, very popular in the 70s?
That picture was taken in Portland, and the man in the picture, Bud Clark, went on to be the mayor of Portland from 1985 to 1992!
We visited a donut shop called Voodoo Doughnuts:
...a very popular place:
Their signature donut is a raised glazed donut in the shape of a man, with pretzel sticks sticking into it, and red jelly "blood" oozing out. They also feature the Tex-Ass donut, a glazed donut the size of a dinner plate. They also have (I'm not making this up) a Bacon-Maple bar - a maple bar with a slice of bacon on top. And they also have (I'm not making this up, either) a Cock-n-Balls donut. It's shaped like.... well, that. And it's cream filled. Of course.
And you thought Los Angeles was the weirdness capital of the world.
On a more prosaic note, here are pictures of Ankeny Square and Skidmore Fountain, both named after prominent Portland citizens:
After the tour, we had dinner at Gustav's Rheinlander restaurant:
...a German restaurant, as if you couldn't figure that out. The food was good - and there was WAY too much of it.
The restaurant had a strolling accordion player:
...and singing waitpersons. While we ate, a bunch of them came out and treated us to a few songs. And here I must digress momentarily...
When I was growing up, my parents (both of whom majored in German in college) had a couple of albums of German songs. I heard those albums a lot when I was young. One song I particularly remember had the line "Bier hier! Oder ich fall um!", which, loosely translated, means "Bring me some beer before I keel over!"
Just a couple of months ago, while visiting my parents, I noticed a cassette tape of those albums. I borrowed the tape, and listening to the albums was a great nostalgia exercise, hearing those songs again that I hadn't heard for over thirty years.
So... not two months after hearing those songs again for the first time in years, I sit myself down to dinner at a German restaurant in Portland, Oregon, the singing waiters come out, and what's the first song they sing? "Bier hier! Oder ich fall um!"
Talk about synchronicity. I darn near fell um.
After dinner, we went back to the motel. And that was mostly it for the day, except for one more interesting incident...
The motel was half a block from a streetcar line, and the streetcar went all the way into downtown Portland. We talked about the idea of riding the streecar into downtown the following morning, just for the ride. So I walked down to the streetcar stop at the corner to look at the sign and find out about fares, times, etc. While I was standing there, a car pulled out of a liquor store parking lot on the corner, and ran smack into another passing car. The driver of the car that was hit pulled to the side of the road. The other driver acted like he was going to pull over... and then he took off.
Well, this caused quite a stir in the neighborhood. Several people on the street had witnessed the event. One young woman came running over to me asking for a pen. I lent her mine, and she scribbled down the the hit-and-run driver's license plate number on her hand, and then ran back over (with my pen) to the driver of the car that was hit. The police showed up moments later. I hung around for a while, watching the excitement from the streetcar stop, until the young woman finally came back and returned my pen, and then I went back to the motel and told Terry the story.