Cycled into town to arrange getting my bike boxed and ready for the flight home. Lori recommended an excellent bike shop called River City Bicycles, but for some reason they couldn’t help. I can’t quite remember why, but they served free coffee and were close enough to the centre of town to lure me across the river to investigate Powell’s book store and the City centre. In the afternoon I went to see a curious and slightly disappointing Japanese movie called ‘Hula Girls’ at Ted & Lori’s neighbourhood cinema, the fabulous Hollywood Theatre. Opened in 1926 during the heydey of silent films, the theatre features a truly head-turning Byzantine rococo tower and an art deco interior. All that, and Japanese hula girls.
In the evening we headed out to a decidedly groovy bar called McMenamin’s Kennedy School, an historic elementary school opened in 1915. Now lovingly converted into a bar (actually, several bars), restaurant, arty cinema and hotel; I think I liked the corridors best – big, wide, wood-lined corridors full of nooks and crannies, great for recreating scenes from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Not the first McMenamin’s I’ve been to on this trip, it turns out: the High Street Brewery where I ate and listened to the Sugarcubes in Eugene was one too. Obviously, my kinda place. I’m beginning to like Oregon, and Portland in particular, quite a lot.
