The Portland Not-Exactly-Express: Day 8 - Portlandia

One of the things I was happy to find out about the timing of my trip was that I would be in Portland for their Saturday Market (it's also open on Sunday, and the entire week before Christmas and then closes for 2 months). It's not really a farmers market, or a flea market, or an art fair, or one of Portland's pods but a combination of all of those. It's a place where you can buy original paintings, exotic soaps, handmade musical instruments, gourmet popcorn, fresh produce, and a wide variety of ethnic foods. Knowing in advance that the market gets incredibly busy as the afternoon rolls on and long lines can form at some of the more popular food carts I decided to get an early start and hit the market as soon as it opened. Early is a bit relative as the market doesn't open until 10, so I was surprised when the place was pretty empty for the first half hour or so, especially since it was another sunny and mild day. It seems that Portland is a sleepy town on the weekends. The good thing was that it gave me a nice head start on the food. A few of the food carts that were at the market I had seen and tried the day before so I skipped them and looked for new culinary adventures. I tried some mostly mediocre food from a Polish and a BBQ cart that aren't really worth mentioning. In fact the food choices seemed a bit underwhelming until I hit Doña Lola's where I had a fantastic pork and cheese pupusa. A pupusa is a thick corn tortilla-like flatbread that in my case was stuffed with pork and cheese that is cooked into it. It came with fresh pico de gallo, cabbage salad, and some kind of "tomatoes sauce." It alone was worth the trip to the market, but there was much more left to see.


There were lots of artists selling their goods at the market. There were ceramics, painters, wood workers, glass blowers, photographers, graphic designers with shirts and prints, and so much more. The surprising thing was the number of exceptional quality works from extremely talented artists. These weren't just your weekend craft makers, though there were plenty of those too, but passionate, down to their bones artistic people. Some were college grads, some still in art school, and some have spent their lives honing their self-taught craft. While so many of those at the market were talented, there were a few that really stood out for me. The most interesting of them was Sienna Morris, who describes herself as a numberism artist. Aside from her works being visually pleasing, they also have an interesting math or science aspect to them. Her works are made up entirely of numbers and formulas that are specific to the subject matter. In a painting of a violin, the instrument itself is made up of the formula for the resonance frequency of the wood its made of, which is responsible for the pleasing sound an actual violin makes. Another painting that has a spiral galaxy in it is made up of the coordinates in the sky necessary to see it through a telescope.

Although they didn't have quite as interesting stories about their works, there were several other artists worth mentioning. There was Tricia Beck who painted beautifully twisted, and gnarled trees on the sides of misty mountains as well as iridescent close-ups of butterfly wings and other natural beauties and oddities inspired by her many travels. Then there was J. Slattum, who paints eerie surreal paintings with rich colored and a dream-like quality that looks like it could turn nightmare any second. The very humorous and creative guys of Spoonman Creations make Jewelery, masks, chimes, and various other items out of kitchen utensils, silverware, butcher knives and many things no longer recognizable. They have bracelets made of Sterling silver forks whose tines have been bent, twisted,and curled until they look like something a fashionable resident of Wonderland might wear. Last there was Thomas Modeller, who makes beautiful three dimensional wooden puzzles that range from polyhedron jigsaws to innocuous looking cubes that belie intricately interlocking pieces below the surface. While the puzzles alone were neat, the choice of high quality, richly colored woods and the obvious meticulous shaping and finishing of each piece made them as much a show piece as brain teaser.

I could have easily spent hours walking around and talking to the various people. Most of them were not only willing but eager to talk about their work, their process, and their lives. There were several interesting people that I wanted to document amongst their works and even at work if possible. Although there's no legal reason not to take pictures of people and their stuff at the market (they're in a public place and the photos aren't going to be used commercially so they're fair game), whenever I wanted to take pictures of someone or their works I always made sure I asked them first. Most were more than willing, and even those that asked me not to were polite and thanked me for asking first - except for one guy. I never got the guys name but he had a booth with lots of little paintings on wood blocks of single items like cartoonyslinked off. Incidentally I later heard him yelling "Merry fucking Christmas you whores" at a group of obnoxiously cheerful, cute, and bubbly girls walking around singing Christmas carols.

Although I could have spent all day at the market alone, I eventually pulled myself away to hit a few more stops. First was Voodoo Doughnuts, which ended up only being a block away from the market. Voodoo has become quite well known for their quirky, and off beat sense of culinary humor. They serve such doughnut delicacies as Crunchberry covered doughnuts, the large, chocolaty, and cream filled cock-n-balls (which is shaped like a...oh, you get it already), and the disgustingly delicious bacon maple bar. A rectangular cake doughnut covered in a super sweet maple glaze and then topped with bacon. There are many Portlanders that prowl foodie forums (Portlandians? Porters? Portlandonians?) who will tell you not to waste your time. They'll question why you would wait in line for surly cashiers to serve you highly overrated doughnuts. Now I'll admit that there may be better straight up donuts in Portland, but once I realized that a lot of the 20 and 30-something P-landers (?) One these forums, and in Portland im general, are so focused on trying to be ultra-hipster douchebags (these douchey Portlandites can easily be spotted by looking for guys wearing nut-bulgingly tight jeans, thick rimmed glasses and an ironic and/or retro t-shirt. The girls will be wearing lots of "vintage" thrift store clothing that they dint get at a thrift store, and probably something, like pants or a skirt, made out of recycled t-shirts) that once something gets popular they instantly shun it, so I cast their nay saying aside and hit the line. It was worth it. I had the previously mentioned maple Bacon bar as well as just a regular glazed doughnut and they were both thoroughly satisfying. The maple and bacon flavors actually serve to balance each other out, the salty bacon helping to ground the almost sicky sweet maple glaze.

Having successfully gotten my doughnut on, I walked around for about 15 minutes and decided it was time to eat again so I hopped on a bus and crossed the river, about a 30 minute ride all told, to hit the Good Food Here pod in one of the South East district's neighborhoods. Although there were a couple pods there that had sounded good when I was looking into it, I chose this pod solely because of the name of one of the trucks - Viking Soul Food. When I first got to the pod I circled around until I found my prey and then I teased it a bit. I acted like I didn't see it. I tried a root vegetable wrap from a vegan truck. I circled around again, looking over the Scandinavian goods listed on the Viking's menu board as if I hadn't already pored over it online and then moved on like I wasn't sure. I tried some pretty good fried chicken from Cackalack Chicken. When I had finally lulled the Viking's chrome Airstream trailer into a false sense of security I pounced like a tiger...a slow, fat tiger. Viking Soul Food serves what they call Scandinavian comfort food, most of which is served in a lefse (pronounced lef-suh), which is a soft flatbread made from potatoes. First I tried what they called a Pølse, which is Swedish potato and pork sausage with Lingonberries, mustard, surkal (a Scandinavian sour cabbage like sauerkraut), and sharp cheddar in a lefse. To spice things up a bit i dipped it in some of their beet based hot sauce that they called Mjollnir, which is the name of Thor's legendary hammer. Simply put, it was incredible. It was like a Scandinavian burrito where all the ingredients mixed together to make some new, but strangely familiar taste...like tasting your mom's home cooking after weeks of TV dinners. I instantly needed more. I was tempted to get more of the same, but I was afraid I might miss something even better. For my second round I had their Winter wrap which had roasted apples and pears, spiced Jarlsberg cheese, hazelnuts, and a sherry sauce wrapped in a lefse. It was good, with a nice balance of sweet and savory, but it didn't capture to taste bud magic of the other so I ended up getting another and it was just as good as the first one.

By this point it was getting dark, which seems to come far too early in the north, though it's probably exaggerated here in Portland because the city is surrounded by the mountains in the west. I headed back to the guesthouse where I finally had to take some time to do laundry since I was running out of clean clothes and my "traveling suit" was starting to get a bit funky. I finished off the night by walking to the Rogue ale house again where I skirted perilously close to drunk, but stayed on the safe side of sober so that I could walk back to my room and call it a night. Tomorrow I have a few hours to play with and then I'm on the train to Sacramento, which is a relatively short jaunt at 15 hours.