Portland Spoke – The Official Blog of Travel Portland

Personally, I think that Portland has a lot of perks. There’s the great tax-free shopping, the quick-and-easy access to the great outdoors (hello Forest Park!), the drool-worthy culinary and liquid libation scene and above all, the welcoming buzz of activity.

Lan Su Chinese Garden by LaValle PDX

Portland Perks is also the name of Travel Portland’s exclusive hotel package. It includes your choice of more than 25 hotels; free overnight parking (an average savings of $25 for downtown hotels); complimentary continental breakfast for two and a discount-packed coupon book filled with savings like $20 off dinner at the Heathman Restaurant and 2-for-1 admission to the Lan Su Chinese Garden.

Portland Perks is a great deal year-round, but if you book a two-night stay from now until April 30, you’ll get $50 cash at check-in to spend any way you wish.  This is only valid at selected hotels and you need to travel by the end of April.

Need some extra Portland motivation? Now through April 5, you can vote for your favorite Portland-inspired photo on Facebook.  The winner will receive a two-night stay at a participating Perks Hotel, a $50 American Express giftcard and a Canon PowerShot SX130 IS digital camera for all those pretty pictures.

The Berlin Wall

John Donne couldn’t have predicted an iPhone. Nor could he have foreseen ITB Berlin, an enormous trade show that annually attracts more than 10,000 exhibitors from around the globe — including a team of Oregon tourism representatives — bent on wooing German travelers.

But nobody could have summed up my ITB experience — a head-spinning confluence of history and happenstance, literature and technology, hard truths and heartbreaking news — any better than Donne, who famously wrote: “No man is an island entire of itself.”

It began with breakfast on March 11, when I stumbled across writer David Simon’s eloquent but dispiriting analysis of “two Americas, politically and economically distinct.” Afterwards, I spent my free morning exploring another line of demarcation: the Berlin Wall, a section of which still stands just a few blocks from Checkpoint Charlie, which served as one of the crossings between East and West Berlin.

Portland Center Stage's production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Photo: Owen Carey.

The vitality of the scene — the still-fresh history, the looming metaphor — was amazing, and my inner English major immediately raced to Frost (“something there is that does not love a wall”) and Kesey, whose “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which I was re-reading on the plane, is filled with its own fault lines: inside vs. outside, McMurphy vs. Big Nurse, free-spirited individualism vs. the conforming, lobotomizing power of The Combine.

Sadly, the fault lines — Simon’s, Berlin’s, Kesey’s — were not merely symbolic that day. News of the massive earthquake and tsunami kept my boothmates and I tethered to our smart phones for updates from Japan and the Oregon Coast.

This technology — which delivered the harrowing news, helped me navigate a new city, brought me to Simon’s piercing essay and allowed me to talk to my wife half a world away — thus shed, however temporarily, its dehumanizing and vapid qualitites in favor of meaningful, real-time connections that affirmed Donne’s assertion from a pre-digital age: “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less.”

To market we go

The Portland Farmers Market at the Park Blocks at Portland State University (SW Park & Montgomery) has officially opened!  The market opening is a welcome sign of spring. It’s a great community gathering of local farmers, food vendors, foodies and all those who want to live and eat well. (more…)

Photo courtesy of Portland Japanese Garden/Adam Royer

Like those around the world, Portlanders have been shocked and saddened by the recent disaster in Japan. Portland has a sister city relationship with Sapporo, and below are just a few of many ways that our community is supporting our friends in Japan.

• Japan-related organizations in Portland have joined forces to provide financial aid to survivors of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The newly formed Oregon Japan Relief Fund will contribute 100 percent of donations raised through the fund to Portland-based Mercy Corps’ relief efforts. The local humanitarian agency is working with a Japanese partner to provide emergency assistance to earthquake survivors in Japan. The donation website can be found at: http://www.mercycorps.org/fundraising/oregonjapanrelieffund

• The Portland Japanese Garden has set up a “Wish Arbor” as a place to reflect, visit and remember victims of the recent disaster in Japan. Visitors are invited to write wishes and condolences on cards that can be hung on the memorial. The arbor is located just outside of the garden’s admission gate, open during operating hours, and does not require admission to the garden. http://japanesegarden.com/japandisaster

• There will be a candlelight vigil held for Japan on Fri., March 18th from 6-8 p.m. in Portland (venue TBD, please check www.vigil4japanpdx.org for updates). Donations will be accepted to send to Japan via Mercy Corps.

• Hellion Gallery, which presents contemporary art shows in both Portland and Tokyo, will be donating 20% of profits from this month’s art sales in Portland (the current exhibition is of paintings by Ai Ohkawara) to the relief effort in Japan.

• Mt. Hood Meadows ski resort will donate $5 from each night-ski lift ticket purchased ($15 on-site or $10 in advance online) to ski on March 23rd and 24th (Wednesday and Thursday) from 3-9 p.m. to Mercy Corps’ Japan disaster relief fund. Tickets are normally $29, thus offering both a discount and a donation.
http://www.skihood.com/Store/Products/Tickets-and-Equipment-Rentals/Tickets/Japan-Disaster-Relief-Night-Ticket

• Rapha Performance Roadwear is organizing fundraising bike rides (Rapha Rides for Tohoku) in Japan and the U.S., and will match donations of $10 or over on their website. The ride in Portland begins at Albina Press at 9 a.m. on Sat., March 19th. http://www.rapha.cc/rapha-rides-for-tohoku

• Beast restaurant is serving a fundraising dinner on Tues., March 29th. Tickets are $200 per person, and reservations can be made through their website. http://www.beastpdx.com/reservations.htm

• Portland Design Collective will be staging a fashion show on April 1st from 7-9 p.m. Originally a fundraiser to send teenage design students from Mt. Tabor Middle School to Japan, it has evolved into a joint effort to do so, and raise funds to help friends and family in Japan. Ticket sales will benefit the students, but other donation opportunities will be available at the event.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Portland-Design-Collective/157191524322470

• Mercy Corps has a constantly updated list of events held around Greater Portland to benefit the Japan relief cause, which you can check here: http://www.mercycorps.org/events.

I’m excited to share my first blog post with you as the new Marketing Assistant at Travel Portland! I admit I’ve been busy learning names, finding the elusive office supply room and getting lost amid the offices, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t taken the time to explore what downtown Portland has to offer as I get acquainted with my new working environment.

People love the many large, well-known entertainment options in downtown: delicious meals at award-winning restaurants, soaking up a room-size modern painting at the Portland Art Museum, or running along the expanse of Tom McCall Waterfront Park. However, downtown Portland isn’t all about “big” adventures. During my recent lunch hours, I’ve enjoyed some of the “little gems” that make Portland shine … and I wanted to share them with you. (more…)

Some exciting news from The Biggest Little City: Pre-production work is underway on a film version of The Motel Life, the first book by Portland musician and writer Willy Vlautin, a Reno native.

Vlautin’s novels, which have drawn comparisons to Steinbeck and Carver, are like his songs: plainspoken yet lyrical, heartbreaking but hopeful.

You can catch Vlautin and his Richmond Fontaine bandmates in Portland on April 14 at the Doug Fir.

Vlautin’s other novels include Lean on Pete – a finalist for this year’s Oregon Book Awards — and Northline.