The People You Meet at Powell’s
There’s nowhere else like it in the world. Taking up a full city block, the three-story Powell’s Books is one of the greatest landmarks in Portland. It’s home to more than 2 million books, with something for every visitor in the store’s 3,500 sections ranging from botany and maps to LGBTQ erotica and rare books. We asked four employees across the store and its sister locations in Portland what brought them to work at the local hallmark and what books they recommend for reading up on the Pacific Northwest.
The Company Making Heritage Knitwear in Portland
Tucked into the far corner of a Northeast Portland warehouse is a quartet of ceaselessly clicking machines knitting thin strands of wool yarn into thick bolts of fabric. Metallic relics similar in shape and intricacy to the insides of upright pianos, the machines continuously create the miles of heavyweight fabric that have been at the heart of Dehen Knitting Company for nearly 100 years.
The Tranquil Teahouse in a Chinese Garden
Overlooking the glassy, lily pad-studded lake at Lan Su Chinese Garden is the Tower of Cosmic Reflections. Home to the garden’s two-story teahouse, it is an oasis of dark lacquered wood rooms where visitors to the garden can reflect, meditate, and enjoy the true purpose of Chinese tea culture: to bring people together, nurture relationships, and show respect.
The Warp and Weft of Life
Stephanie Craig née Wood remembers hearing the story of her grandmother sitting in the middle of a cold river to peel sticks for her aunt and other family members to use for weaving baskets. But she never learned to weave with them.
A Swift Journey
At dusk, in September, something spectacular happens in Portland. For the last 30-plus years, anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of Vaux’s swifts, the smallest swifts in the Chaetura family, come to roost inside the chimney of Chapman Elementary School as they head to Central America and Venezuela for the winter. The chittering birds fly in expansive, cyclonic patterns as a flock before dramatically hurtling into the chimney crown as if sucked in by a vacuum.
One for All
Portland is home to hundreds of breweries, brewpubs, and taprooms, but there’s only one place where you can have a pint while you brew a keg of your own beer.
Life of the Party
You’ll never confuse the sound of DJ Anjali with that of anyone else in Portland, or even likely with that of anyone on the West Coast. Her infectious music melds a host of styles—the beat- and bass-heavy sounds and catchy, tinny sitar melodies of Bhangra, a style of music and dance from India’s Punjab region; Bollywood; Desi bass; hip-hop; Asian underground; and more—to drum up addictive, heart-thumping, non-stop dancing.
One for the Books
It’s almost eerily quiet on the production floor of Grossenbacher Brothers, Inc., one of Portland’s two remaining bookbinderies. There are no fancy whirring machines collating loose pages into finished books or automated equipment stamping hundreds of books every hour. There’s just Terry Bradshaw and his three employees doing things the only way the company has ever done them: one book at a time, completely by hand.
Cheers for Charity
Housed inside a century-old building in North Portland, its remodeled shotgun-style interior lined in warm, lacquered wood and exposed brick, the Oregon Public House follows the standard counter-service model of most brewpubs. But placing an order here comes with one small twist: in addition to food and drinks, guests choose a charity from a rotating cast of six to receive the profits of their order. Since its May 2013 opening, the Oregon Public House has donated more than $164,000 to dozens of local charities.