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Off Off Topic
Joshua Tanzer is the founder and editor of Offoffoff.com. He has been a journalist for a really long time and a blogger for a really short time. He likes romantic dinners by candlelight and long walks on the beach. His turnoffs are regressive tax policy and mean people. Being of mixed French, German and Russian ancestry makes him feel like an honorary member of the Axis of Evil.
NOTE: Offoffoff's blog section is in development and will be open to readers soon. If you're interested in starting your own blog, please write to jmt@offoffoff.com.
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Week of December 18, 2005:
PICTURES | Picture of the week #6: Portland
TRAVEL | Techs' appeal
TRAVEL | Tempus Puget
RANDOM THOUGHTS | Blogger's block
NEWS | Item
PREVIOUS: November 20, 2005
PICTURES: PICTURE A WEEK #6: PORTLAND
Picture of the week #6: Portland
My picture-a-week resolution didn't work out that well, considering it's December and I'm on week 6. (And not planning to take pictures in the near future.)
Still, I have a few leftovers from earlier in the year, and I was kind of tickled by this one. Strange thing about going back to hometown Portland after not having lived there in 18 years — it really isn't the same place anymore. The neighborhoods have changed, the businesses have changed, and the people have changed.
But staying with an old high school friend on the less-gentrified east side, I was still struck by how much of the city was frozen in the '70s — my childhood years — if not the '50s.
Crossing the Steel Bridge on foot, I passed above the Royal Hotel, which just screamed Old Portland to me. Not even the classy Old Portland, which also exists, but the gruff, grungy place that on the west side has been yuppied over.
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| Portland pigeons have more amenities than the New York ones. (Click for larger image.) | |
As for picture 2 (left), one of Portland's best assets is the availability of public water fountains everywhere, donated by a local industrialist many decades ago. Had to take this picture when I saw it.
December 20, 2005 | 3:04 a.m. | Portland, Oregon
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20051218.php#e125
TRAVEL: OVERHEARD IN SEATTLE
Techs' appeal
Conversation overheard among some 20-something white-collar types getting acquainted in a Seattle Starbucks:
Guy: So, do you work for Microsoft or Amazon?
Gal: Microsoft.
Guy: Oh, cool. It's always one or the other.
I sent that to my friend Rachael in New York and she offered the following:
Too funny about that conversation you overheard. I bet that one happens every day. Sort of different from the typical NY one:
Girl: So where do you work?
Guy: I work on the options desk of CSFB (then spends 5 minutes detailing how great he and his job are).
Girl: Sounds fun.
December 20, 2005 | 2:27 a.m. | Seattle, Washington
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20051218.php#e124
TRAVEL: SEATTLE
The view looking away from Seattle is way better than the view of Seattle.
Tempus Puget
The weird thing about Seattle is that it has this trendy mystique around the country but when I'm here I can't help seeing everything that's wrong with the place. Maybe that's because I grew up in Portland, a city that plays second fiddle to Seattle but is in many ways a better place.
Things I notice about Seattle:
— It's probably the one city where the view out is better than the view in. In New York, you want to get out of Manhattan so you get a good view of Manhattan; but in Seattle, the best view is from the waterfront out into the Puget Sound and the surrounding islands. (In Portland, the best view is looking at downtown from the east, so that the buildings are framed by the deep green hills behind them. I say that's why gray weather, which is typical, turns Seattle gloomy while Portland stays a deep forest green.)
— What was Seattle known for before it became hip? Well, first it was suicide and then it was grunge. Grunge would be the word for downtown Seattle, although that's changing. Downtown strikes me as one big Skid Row with a shopping mall in the middle. If you stay within a certain four-block radius, you can shop at Nordstrom, Niketown and Williams-Sonoma in antiseptic comfort all day long, as long as you don't accidentally wander into one of the homeless slash poor people slash porn slash pawnbroker slash check-cashing zones. Now those zones are shrinking a bit. Maybe five years from now the homeless will all have been replaced.
— The number-one thing that makes downtown bad: no public space. I spotted three little triangular corners of blocks that had benches in them, but nothing that resembles a real park. By contrast, downtown Portland is loaded with parks and people use them all the time. And New York? Fuhgeddaboudit. I have a choice of Central Park and two other parks within 10 minutes of my office. To me, that makes midtown Manhattan — concrete and steel towers and all — a really human place. Seattle? Not so human. The best you can do on your lunch break is go down to the waterfront and look out at the islands.
— My new theory: Every city has a secret cheap and surprisingly nice hotel — and now that there's an Internet you can find it. The one I found was the Moore Hotel (moorehotel.com), right downtown, a couple of blocks from Pike Place Market. (But not, of course, near a park.) It looks a little old on the outside (in keeping with the rest of non-mall Seattle), but the rooms were quite decent and the bathrooms were especially nice. The price was in the $60 range (or $40-something if you choose a euro-style room, i.e., one without its own bathroom).
— My friend Kelly informs me there's a mnemonic device for remembering the order of the streets in downtown Seattle. The order of streets, matching two street names to each letter, spells JCMSUP, which can be remembered by the handy phrase "Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest."
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| Too cute to eat. | |
— All that aside, I had a great time in Seattle, going to the Seattle Film Festival (my incomplete festival blog is here), kayaking in the San Juan islands, and visiting friends.
— Best meal: Last day, Cafe Mimosa, at or near the Pike Place Market. Baked halibut with a big tasty mashup of tomatoes, onions, olives and basil on it. The waitress (a transplant in the opposite direction from me, who was wearing unapologetically loud Syracuse orange) said every time somebody orders the halibut, the proprietress tells her how underpriced that dish is. The best value on the menu, apparently.
After I moved to New York, I was told to notice the difference between Pacific and Atlantic salmon. (The Pacific is way better.) Halibut is totally different too. On the east coast, when you find it at all, it's mushy and tasteless. On the west coast it's meaty and delicious, vaguely fishy and lemony at the same time.
— Other best meal: Second day, at Bill's Off Broadway. It looked like a perfect place for a burger and a beer, except they don't seem to have burgers. Go figure. So instead I got the hummus-tomato-cucumber platter, which was so absurdly adorable I had to take a picture of it before eating it. But that wasn't the really great thing. What was really great was the soup of the day: bourbon-squash. (I wasn't sure I heard the waitress right when she said it so I made her repeat it. "With, like, bourbon in it?" I asked. Yes, she said.) I don't like bourbon but I had to give it a try, and it was fantastic. And I had a hometown Henry's on top of that. (No longer brewed in Portland, as far as I know, but still pretty good.)
December 20, 2005 | 1:58 a.m. | Seattle, Washington
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20051218.php#e123
RANDOM THOUGHTS: BLOGGER'S BLOCK
Blogger's block
I sort of lost the will to write this spring, and haven't really done the blog thing since then. I still don't know whether I have the time or inclination, but in the absence of any current-day inspiration, I thought I would go back and post a few of the things I had started this spring. At the time, I was just about to head back from Seattle, and I see I had lots of picky things to say about the place.
December 20, 2005 | 1:53 a.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20051218.php#e122
NEWS: CHENEY IN IRAQ
Captions not written:
"Vice President Cheney personally inspects the mess in Iraq."
December 19, 2005 | 12:23 p.m. | New York, New York
Permanent link: http://www.offoffoff.com/opinion/offofftopic/20051218.php#e121
PREVIOUS: November 20, 2005
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