When You See the Word "Portland" Too Many Times, It Starts to Look Like "Poland"

Last entry about Portland, I swear.  Yesterday (Saturday) the weather was totally perfect...the sun was out, it was about 80 degrees...it's the kind of weather I've been waiting for for the past 8 months.  I purposefully spent most of my day walking around outside, soaking up some much-needed sun. 

• I walked up and down 21st and 23rd streets, which are part of a funky little neighborhood full of independent retail shops and weird bars and cafes.  The Goodwill Store had a very high percentage of Jim Nabor albums in their vinyl section.
  
  
• Powell's Bookstore - my god.  Someone said it was the biggest bookstore ever, and shit, they were not kidding.  It reminded me a bit of Recycled Books in Denton...rooms leading to other rooms which lead to nooks which lead to secret hallways, which lead to a whole other set of rooms!  Every section was color-coded, an organizational detail which I of course appreciated.
  
  
• On that note, I should also mention that 21st and 23rd are part of the Alphabet District, where all the east/west street names are in alphabetical order: Burnside, Couch, Davis, Everett, Flanders, Glisan, Hoyt, Irving, Johnson, Kearney, Lovejoy, Marshall, Northrup, Overton, Pettygrove, Quimby.  I love the organizational aspects of that, too...but if I were a city planner I totally would have mandated that all the establishments on those streets had to start with that letter, too. 
  
  
• We went down by the riverside and watched elderly hippies juggle sticks, then went for a sky tram ride to the hospital.  (Why the destination of the sky tram is the hospital, I'll never understand.  That doesn't give me a tremendous amount of confidence in the safety of the sky tram.)
  
  
• And probably the best part of my day other than the $1.75 PBR tallboys and pinball I enjoyed at the bar later that night, was the Velveteria Velvet Painting museum.  I highly, highly recommend this to anyone ever visiting Portland.  The two people who run it (who I had read about on the website) were there, and could not have been nicer or more interesting.  The place was pretty dead, so they walked me around and told me all sorts of neat stories about all the paintings.  Of course it wouldn't have been right for me to take photos, but goodness me...they had some ridiculously amazing stuff.  The best I can do is share my list with you, and let your black velvet imagination run wild:
  
  
• Dog the Bounty Hunter
• Mr. T with actual gold beads glued to the painting for his necklaces
• Macho Man Randy Savage
• A slightly monoloid-looking Hulk Hogan
• Dolemite
• Jack Lord
  
• A overly manly ballerina who looked like a love child of Gorgeous George and Ric Flair
• The Heaven's Gate Cult leader
• A whole section of black light paintings, mostly focused on sad and/or gambling clowns
• A whole section of nudie paintings, mostly focused on Filipino boobie girls
• A whole section of Elvis paintings, mostly with him crying
  
• A whole section of bandido paintings
• And most importantly, a whole section of unicorn paintings called "Unicornucopia" which included:
• Glam rock unicorns
• Satanic unicorns
• A genie lamp with a vaporous unicorn coming out of it
  
  and the pièce de résistance...
  
  
• A unicorn with an extra long mane, which ebbs and flows into a giant wave, which then becomes the long hair of a beautiful woman.  Carl and Caren lovingly refer to this one as "Unicorn Combover" and I am happy to be able to show you a half-assed picture of it:
  
  
  

Also, I should stick in a plug for them as I'm sure my massive readership will really add a spike to their sales...but they've written a book on black velvet paintings that will be coming out soon.  Note to whoever: I would love to have this for my birthday.

And thus concludes my visit to Portland.  I will definitely be going back, as I did not get to go to Big Al's bowling alley or to try the macaroni and cheese at Savoy.  And next time, I'm going to take the long way home up the coastal 101 for some scenic beach driving with the sunroof open.  Summer, please hurry up.