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Portland and Seattle

Started by Savonarola, October 28, 2016, 12:42:11 PM

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Savonarola

#15
October 29, 2016, 05:21:11 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on October 28, 2016, 07:01:35 PM
Not there now (and won't be during said timeframe), but it is the motherland.  :)

For the Portland area, find a Burgerville (local chain)...always very good.  Portland is also known for other good/odd food places (e.g  http://wafflewindow.com/ ).

Seattle area I am more familiar with.  Will you be based in any particular part of the Seattle area, or in the city itself?

I'll be staying in prosaic Renton. 
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Tonitrus

#16
October 29, 2016, 11:35:40 PM
Renton is better than it used to be.  :)

It's where the area's only Fry's Electronics is located...and there is a Top Pot donut in the main shopping area there.

But...pretty well centrally located to get to the good stuff. 

Also close enough the airport/south light rail stations...so you can park over there and an train it into downtown.

Savonarola

#17
October 30, 2016, 06:30:49 AM
Are the gardens in Portland worth seeing in November; or is it too late by then?
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

CountDeMoney

#18
October 30, 2016, 07:07:43 AM
Is it too late to stop rubbing it in peoples' faces?

Savonarola

#19
November 13, 2016, 10:17:50 PM Last Edit: November 14, 2016, 08:32:30 PM by Savonarola
Portland was beautiful; their zoning laws are so stringent that the area right outside the city is wine country.  It's not so great for the people who live there; they're on the road to becoming a second San Francisco with high paying tech jobs for the elite and poverty coupled with high rent for everyone else.

We're working on the radio system for the bus and LRV system.  Our sub contractor told us the lesson he's learned throughout the years is never hire ex-army rangers as your tower climbers.  He had two work for him, and both decided to rappel down the radio towers (like real men safety equipment is for pussies.)  One guy had his rappelling recorded and posted to Youtube by a random passer-by only to have OSHA discover it.  The other did it right in front of the OSHA inspector.  Both of those resulted in $10,000 fines.

The gardens are still in bloom; in fact the International Rose Test Garden doesn't shut down until Christmas.  The Japanese Garden was supposed to be similar to what one would find in Sapporo, I guess that has a similar climate to Portland.  The Chinese Garden (located in the city center) was small, but very well done.  There was an overwhelming amount of mums on display there.

The art museum had a decent collection of Native American arts and a fair collection of Asian art; but otherwise was spectacularly lame.  The only piece I found interesting was a Botticelli cross done post-conversion by Savonarola (and that was for reasons entirely unrelated to its artistic merit.)  The "Outstanding" piece in the contemporary collection was "No, No New Museum" by Bruce Nauman where he dressed up like a harlequin, jumped up and down shouting"No" and videotaped himself doing this.  This was (and I'm not making this up) the beginning of Nauman's Torturous Clown phase.

The beer was excellent; while, by law, I can't admit their beers are better than those made in Michigan, they were very nearly as good.  One place we went to had nearly 80 Oregon beers on tap.  They also have craft distilleries there as well; I didn't try any of those but I'll just go ahead and say Michigan does those better as well.  ;)

I did go to Powell's Bookstore.  That was impressive.  I got "The Hero With A Thousand Faces."  The clerk was a young woman:

Clerk:  Oh, I'm a huge fan of Joseph Campbell too  :)
Savonarola:  He's my wife's favorite author; I'm getting this to replace the copy she lost.
Clerk:  Oh...

And that ended that conversation.  Not that it matters anymore, but I see I'm every bit as good at dealing with the opposite gender as ever.

I also went to a bar called "Pépé le Moko" on a recommendation from the guide they had in the hotel, and the name, of course.  It was a pretty cool cellar bar, but the drink list was unimaginative and half the drinks were girl drinks.  It had been a rough week for me with Trump's election; and I felt myself losing faith in the future of America again when the bartender told me that the "Fino" sherry was a sweet sherry.  I got a Martini instead.  It met my expectation.  It tasted like booze.

Living in the swamp I'm not used to hear people use words like "Cis-gendered," "Hetronormative" or "Paradigm" in casual conversation; much less in the same sentence.  Even my co-workers from Seattle thought that the Portlanders were flaky.

I'm in Seattle now where, to my relief, you can occasionally see black people (though, admittedly, not very often) and the young ladies at the coffee shops were discussing  :secret: friends and  :secret: boys while the young men were discussing football.

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Savonarola

#20
November 14, 2016, 08:36:23 PM
I went to downtown Seattle today and got lunch at The Flying Fish.  There was a couple sitting next to me which, as is the custom of the people of Seattle, consisted of a white man and a woman of Asian extraction.  They both had ordered an Asian fusion dish; the guy ate his with chop sticks while the gal ate hers with a fork.  That struck me as the perfect metaphor for Seattle; their cracked looking glass of a servant.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Admiral Yi

#21
November 14, 2016, 08:39:48 PM
Maybe she was Thai.  Thai use fork and knife. :nerd:

MadImmortalMan

#22
November 14, 2016, 10:16:45 PM
My wife is in Seattle right now.

Damn I missed Ft. Worth and now this too.
"Stability is destabilizing." --Hyman Minsky

"Complacency can be a self-denying prophecy."
"We have nothing to fear but lack of fear itself." --Larry Summers

Savonarola

#23
November 21, 2016, 04:49:26 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on October 28, 2016, 12:44:01 PM
Seattle: full of dirty hipsters pointedly sighing as you demand they actually serve you the organic coffee you ordered half an hour ago. Not keen to go back. Portland is probably worse.

If you didn't like Seattle you'd really hate Portland.  Seattle is as much a blue collar city as it is a hipster paradise.  Portland is the vision of the dystopian future where the white bourgeoisie has triumphed.  Everyone who doesn't eat organic conflict-free free range sustainable kale will be sent to re-education camps.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Syt

#24
November 21, 2016, 04:50:58 PM


I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

CountDeMoney

#25
November 21, 2016, 04:53:15 PM
Fuck 'em. They don't want anyone moving there anyway, so they can enjoy those Chinese nukes in 2027. 
Flash pan-seared Granola and Birkenstocks, yum-may.

Savonarola

#26
November 21, 2016, 04:53:51 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on October 29, 2016, 11:35:40 PM
Renton is better than it used to be.  :)

It's where the area's only Fry's Electronics is located...and there is a Top Pot donut in the main shopping area there.

The official doughnut of the Seattle Seahawks.  I was surprised at how far the Seahawk fandom went (although I've never lived in a city which had a good football team  <_<.)

They were good doughnuts, thanks for the recommendation.   :)
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

garbon

#27
November 21, 2016, 04:54:44 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 21, 2016, 04:53:15 PM
Fuck 'em. They don't want anyone moving there anyway, so they can enjoy those Chinese nukes in 2027. 
Flash pan-seared Granola and Birkenstocks, yum-may.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to move to Portland anyway. Well...maybe if you're white I could kind of see it.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Savonarola

#28
November 22, 2016, 11:50:51 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on November 14, 2016, 08:36:23 PM
I went to downtown Seattle today and got lunch at The Flying Fish.  There was a couple sitting next to me which, as is the custom of the people of Seattle, consisted of a white man and a woman of Asian extraction.  They both had ordered an Asian fusion dish; the guy ate his with chop sticks while the gal ate hers with a fork.  That struck me as the perfect metaphor for Seattle; their cracked looking glass of a servant.

Then I saw a bumper sticker with "I carry a pistol because a rifle won't fit in my purse," on a Volvo.  It would have been better if it had been on a Prius, but I think that's also a good metaphor for Seattle.  (The same car had a "Guns and Coffee" bumper sticker with the Starbuck's Mermaid with 2 pistols like she was Chow Yun-Fat.)
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

CountDeMoney

#29
November 22, 2016, 11:55:38 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 21, 2016, 04:54:44 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 21, 2016, 04:53:15 PM
Fuck 'em. They don't want anyone moving there anyway, so they can enjoy those Chinese nukes in 2027. 
Flash pan-seared Granola and Birkenstocks, yum-may.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to move to Portland anyway. Well...maybe if you're white I could kind of see it.

I just want to get away the heat and the traffic.  And see how funky living in PST really is.
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