Gene Healy

The Fascinating Travelogue Continues

I really like Portland–it’s the perfect-sized city, the surroundings are beautiful, and so are a lot of the buildings. I’m staying in this super-cool hotel built in 1911 that has a “film classics” motif. Lana Turner is on my keycard. The light-rail is awesome since I didn’t have to pay for it (a guy I met last night called it something like “a multibillion dollar choo-choo for hipsters.”) But unless I’m walking all the wrong places, the city really seems to have a dearth of street-level retail. I don’t know what the explanation for that is. There are plenty of liberal cities with bustling commerce. But you go whole blocks downtown here where there’s nothing to buy. Gripped by man’s primal need for a New York Times, I walked for about 40 minutes this morning before I found a place that had it.

Tomorrow I hit the anti-Portland: Phoenix, for an event at the Goldwater Institute.

Posted on Apr 30, 2008 in Uncategorized | Comments

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