portland’s greatest hits.

remember that time i posted about all the things in portland that have been going out of business lately, and how bummed out about it i am? well, i’m still bummed out about it (north star- nooooooooo!), but i’m willing to let  it go… as long as the following 5 businesses promise me (blood may be required to seal the deal), that they will always be here. ALWAYS.

now, i didn’t just go for places that are fancy or popular. in fact, many of my favorites didn’t make the list (i’m sorry caiola’s and rosemont market, there just isn’t room for everyone!). i wanted places that were iconic, and integral to the structure that makes portland porltand. do you remember when jennifer grey got that nose job, and then she looked like nobody anymore and we all forgot about her? that’s what would happen to portland if these businesses went away. i’m THAT SERIOUS.

in no particular order…

1. material objects: first of all, we are extremely lucky that there are a lot of great consignment shops in this town, especially now that shit is going down with the economy. but material objects is the king of them all. i love that it still looks exactly like the 90s in there. i also love the fact that pretty much everything in the store is less than $20. friendly, unpretentious, and always stuffed full of dirt cheap fashiony goodness. love.

2. paul’s food center: ok, totally shifty- i would probably/definitely never buy produce there… but there’s just something about a sketchy independent grocery store plopped in the middle of town that warms my heart. it feels like the land before time in there, but with more drunks.

3. bill’s pizza: hub for late night wasted snackage, this is another kind of gross one for the list. their pizza isn’t very good (so salty), and kind of pricey (for a single slice of kind of shitty pizza), but they have beer and orange soda on tap, and if you’re lucky, you can hear drunk people having sex in the bathroom.

4. videoport: as a complete netflix whore, one wouldn’t figure that i’d be singing high praises to a video store,  but videoport feels like home. probably because it consistently employs the very best people in town, and last time i checked, netfilix didn’t have an “incredibly strange” section. it’s a cinematic archeological dig in there. i don’t care if all video is going online, videoport needs to stay open FOREVER. are you listening dennis?

5. yes books: YES. BOOKS. everywhere. piled into corners and on the floor. dusty and disorganized, like a vaguely alphabetical treasure hunt. i love the musty used book smell and the ornery owner. to me, it’s portland’s own tiny musty version of the embryo concepts bookstore from funny face.

honorable mentions: the eastland park hotel, geno’s, old port candy, and ferdinand.

what local landmarks do you refuse to live without (you don’t even have to live in portland)?

weekend pickthrough- underwater edition.

much like a gigantic jellyfish, this week came out of nowhere. i had all these brilliant plans about getting 8 hours of sleep and being a productive and worthy human… and giant jelly just wobbled in and knocked the infrastructure out of my whole week. fuck.

obviously the wordpress.com feature was totally awesome, but my goal to try and answer all my comments is slowly killing me. maybe i’m 1/4 of the way through… and then of course there was the demon dog. not only did i have to pick up poop for the first time in my life (not impressed jamie- please stick to your regular pooping schedule!), but i also had to rearrange the whole way i formatted my life. no reading in bed because the light will keep the dog up… get up half an hour earlier than usual to take the dog on a walk… my texts to the boyfriend during the work day were no longer about our days or our plans, but about the dog’s bathroom habits and who was next on the walking schedule…

and then this morning, i awoke to find that the gentlemen putting on my new roof, had sealed me into my condo with a large piece of plywood over the door and several layers of blue tarps. i had to locate a hole in the tarps to scream through so that they could let me (and the dog) out. they seemed unimpressed. also, i got asphalt in my hair.

because i was so crazy sleepless behind this week, i haven’t mined as many great pickthrough items as usual.  but hopefully you can still find something to enjoy in this slightly truncated and hastily thrown together weekend pickthrough:

i thought that reviewing applebees on tripadvisor was the lamest possible thing you could do on the internet, i was wrong.

ghost towns of the recession.

does anyone else have one of these? i’m obsessed with trying one out (and frankly i see the “sexually suggestive” nature of the product to be a pro and not a con).

amanda jennifer shows us the hidden hazards of spanx.

what’s better than an adult spelling bee? a DRUNKEN adult spelling bee.

wait, you mean that the 3rd dimension isn’t new? incessant ramblings on the suckyness that is 3-D.

dirtnap daydreams. that portland food coma guy plans the ultimate fantasy binge before he heads to the big vomitorium in the sky. (bonus points for wanting to eat sushi off a naked lady).

am i totally stupid for not realizing that you can make ketchup in your very own kitchen? yeah, probably.

and of course, the week isn’t complete without a wistful fanboy wave goodbye to LOST (i don’t know about you, but i’d cut a bitch to get my hands on daniel faraday’s notebook).