Portland Spoke – The Official Blog of Travel Portland

Bikes are big in Portland. Like 300-plus miles of bike lanes big. So big that we were dubbed “America’s Best Bike City” by Bicycling Magazine in 2012 — another in a list of accolades that stretches about as far as the aforementioned bike lanes.

Since art imitates life, it makes sense that the Portland Art Museum will feature a stunning array of iconic bicycle designs with “Cyclepedia” (June 8 – Sept. 8), a special exhibition of 40 two-wheelers integral to bike design.

Featuring touring, racing, mountain and even children’s bikes, the display is a comprehensive look at the evolution of bicycles, and is required ogling for riders and design buffs alike. Fittingly, Portland is the only U.S. stop for this European collection.

With accompanying programs like public workshops, lectures, locally made bike displays and even free bike tours in June and July, this exhibit offers an excellent way to get a peek at Portland’s pedal-powered culture.

It’s a small outdoor venue unlike any other: a grassy lawn, sloping down to a modestly-sized stage and bandshell, with an elephant yard on one side and a red ape reserve on the other. For the past 35 years, musicians and fans alike have flocked to the Oregon Zoo each summer to revel in music, sunshine and friends — including those of the feathered and furry varieties.

The 2013 Oregon Zoo Summer Concert Series (June 22 – Sept. 6) boasts a roster of artists as diverse as the park’s residents, which range from African bullfrogs to Visayan warty pigs. Folk singer/songwriter John Prine takes the stage on opening night; maybe he’ll perform “Crazy as a Loon,” a favorite of the birds in the nearby aviary. Ziggy Marley brings his Jamaican reggae to town on June 30 — his song “Black Cat” might elicit a roar from the zoo’s resident big cats. Other musical acts on the schedule include Weird Al Yankovic, the Indigo Girls, Randy Newman, the B-52s, Los Lobos and the Doobie Brothers. Alas, no Snoop Dog, er, Lion.

Shows start at 7 p.m., with access to the concert area at 5 p.m. Concert tickets also grant zoo access for the full day, so plan to visit the animals before the show. And whether you bring a picnic (no outside beverages) or enjoy the zoo’s selection of local food, beer and wine, be sure to fill up — after all, you wouldn’t want your stomach growling louder than the Amur tigers (or the bands).

True story: Radiohead’s Thom Yorke once wanted to be Jim Morrison. Well, at least that’s what the band’s frontman sang in one of their earliest tracks, “Anyone Can Play Guitar.” During Rock Band Tuesdays at Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade, not only can anyone play guitar, but they can also be Yorke, Morrison or one of hundreds of other musicians in the iconic video game.

Ground Kontrol is a video-gamers’ Valhalla, crammed with 90+ classic coin-op masterpieces ranging from Pac-Man to Dance Dance Revolution. Serving beer and wine in the evenings, it’s a great place to relive 8-bit memories and also hosts DJs, twice-monthly free play nights and tournaments, in addition to Rock Band Tuesdays. (more…)

Portland’s Time-Based Art Festival (which everyone simply calls TBA) celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, which means 10 years of bringing challenging, perplexing, satisfying and even exhilarating art to the city. TBA is the city’s best window into the restless, ever-evolving world of the avant-garde, both American and international, especially in the performing arts but also the visual, and from Sept. 6-16 it changes the flavor of the culture here.

Centered again this year at its hub in the old Washington High School on the city’s east side, TBA spreads to performing spaces across the city with multiple events on any given day, from full-scale productions to lectures and workshops. This year’s festival is headlined by performance pioneer Laurie Anderson, but before she performs on the festival’s closing day, lots of other opportunities for puzzlement and inspiration beckon:

Opening Night – Sept. 6
Washington High School (Southeast Stark and 13th Avenue)

The festival begins with an outdoor performance and video projection spectacle courtesy of New York’s Big Art Group, and the opening of both the festival’s visual arts show and its late-night cabaret, The Works.

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol – Sept. 7-9 and 10-12
Winningstad Theatre (1111 S.W. Broadway) and BodyVox (1201 NW 17th Ave.)

This Mexico City collective, dedicated to fashioning history into performances for the contemporary stage, performs a “documentary play” about the reform movement in Mexico in the ‘60s, then reprises its account of the disappearance of Mexico City’s water resources since the time of the Conquistadors. (more…)

Over the last few years, as the level of creativity cooked up by local chefs has garnered increasing national attention, Portland’s inventive food scene has come to a boil. Celebrating Oregon’s bountiful ingredients, as well as the masterminds who work with them, Feast Portland (Sept. 20-23) not only highlights local foodie talent, but infuses the city with some of the coolest kitchen personas from around the country. Presented by Bon Appétit, this buffet of James Beard Award-winning talent will pack Stumptown full of dinners, demos, classes and tastings.

Main events at the belt-busting festival include Thursday’s Sandwich Invitational (a delectable beer-paired contest featuring entries from Bunk Sandwiches, Podnah’s Pit BBQ and Kenny & Zuke’s, among others) in downtown’s Director Park; Friday’s Feast Portland Night Market (a Southeast-Asian-style celebration of street food with contributors from Portland, Austin, NYC and London) at the Ecotrust Building; and the Oregon Bounty Grand Tasting (with demonstrations by Naomi Pomeroy from Beast, Paul Qui of Austin’s Uchiko, and many others) in Pioneer Courthouse Square Friday and Saturday.

Packages with passes to the entire Feast, as well as individual event tickets, are available for purchase online now. Space is limited, and while Feast may never have too many cooks in its kitchen, there’s only so much room for discerning diners.

Beers and bikes — in Portland’s alphabet, these two Bs could battle ferociously for the right to be Stumptown’s second letter. But what if they joined forces and pedaled together? Brewcycle — that’s what.

Seating up to 15 riders, this human-powered party vehicle tours Beervana’s various micro-breweries, helping bikers work up a thirst, and drinkers work up a sweat. The rides all begin and end in Northwest Portland, and can take either a leisurely two-hour tour, parking just a few times, or a faster, more arduous pedal with more frequent stops. Popping into Lucky Labrador Beer Hall, Rogue, Bridgeport Brewing Company, Caps & Corks (a bottle shop and bar) and Deschutes Brewery, the tours offer a schooling in local suds along with a bit of physical education, to boot.

What better way to check both beer and bikes off your Portland to-do list?

Humans make illogical decisions, or at least so thinks one Mr. Spock, the right-hand man to Starship Enterprise’s Captain Kirk. For example, in 2009, Atomic Arts, a local live theater group, decided to stage a free production of “Star Trek: The Original Series” in one of Portland’s many public parks. Now boldly going into its fourth year, the results, to paraphrase Spock, have been fascinating.

This time around, fans get more insight into the pointy-eared first officer’s mindset with a performance of the “Journey to Babel” episode. Starting at 5 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday in August, the Trek in the Park troupe dons intergalactic outfits and plays out the 1967 episode that introduced Ambassador Sarek, Spock’s disapproving father, and showed how everyone’s favorite Vulcan came to be Dr. McCoy’s foil.

This year, the performance is staged under the shade of the St. Johns Bridge in grassy Cathedral Park, thought to be one of the landing spots of Oregon’s own brave explorers, Lewis and Clark. The new, larger space will accommodate more Trekkers, and the audience is encouraged to beam up picnic baskets, blankets and low chairs to make the performance more comfortable. The show is even better when you watch the episode in advance (the CBS website has a clip of Spock’s awkward family reunion and a bit of alien diplomacy in action), so you can see how closely the cast sticks to the script — and anticipate some of the great fight scenes.

Trek in the Park is perfect entertainment for a summer’s evening. If you asked Spock, he’d estimate the statistical likelihood of the show being great fun at greater than 99 percent.

In Portland’s old days — a less civilized time when the city teemed with pirates, smugglers and outlaws — careless revelers who consumed too many libations might have been “shanghaied,” or kidnapped, and whisked away to work on the sea.

Today, there’s a safer way to get your passport punched while enjoying some fine cocktails: a trip through Portland’s Distillery Row. The epicenter of the emerging craft distillery movement, this former warehouse district is home to a slew of independent, small-batch spirit makers who have put Portland on the map of liquor connoisseurs, and great bottles on the shelf of bartenders worldwide.

From House Spirits, which concocts the botanical-infused Aviation Gin, to New Deal Distillery, whose Hot Monkey Vodka is flavored with five chili peppers, Portland’s potables are known for inventive ingredients, consistent blends and fine detail.

The 2012 Distillery Row Passport is an excellent way to make sure you don’t miss out on any of Portland’s amazing bottles. Not only do passport holders benefit from no-fee tastings and tours, they also save on everything from food to entertainment at more than 50 participating businesses throughout the area. And, with the addition of Bushwhacker, Portland’s first urban cidery, and Alchemy Wine Productions, a new in-city vintner, the world of Portland’s small-batch scene just keeps getting larger.

Put down your video game controllers and step away from your Mario Kart. The best way to race isn’t on a television, it’s down a volcano in Portland.

But this is no children’s game — the PDX Adult Soapbox Derby (Aug. 18) pits grown-up kids against each other, each designing and assembling their own downhill racers in pursuit of maximum speed or big laughs.

The annual event reaches its sweet 16 this year. But as long as these homemade racers tickle the spine of Mount Tabor, an extinct volcano that is now a forested urban park in Southeast Portland, the event will never grow up. Each year, dozens of teams build cars to zip down the course, a great mix of curves and straight-aways, lined with picnicking onlookers — many sipping cool brews in the designated beer garden.

Prizes for speed, engineering, fan-favorites and lifetime achievement are handed out to deserving daredevils, but the cheers may be more valuable than any award. Everything from streamlined, lacquered, wooden one-man bombers to fully-packed Scooby Doo Dream Machine doppelgängers zooms down the hill, making this a great day in the park for kids and the young-at-heart alike.

Summer is high season for movies — it’s when studios release their tentpole flicks, timed to lure overheated customers indoors with the promise of air conditioning and cool stories. Portland’s Laurelhurst Theater keeps this tradition alive all summer long with a series of timeless films. Each month, they show classics from a different decade, and every week, a new old favorite splashes across their silver screen.

In June, timeless westerns like Clint Eastwood’s Hang ‘Em High and groovy surf flicks like The Endless Summer recall the turbulent 1960s. July’s flicks, like Coppola’s gritty murder mystery The Conversation and the Robert Redford spy thriller Three Days of the Condor, embody Hollywood’s penchant for darkness in the 1970s. August’s ’80s movies put America’s varied tastes on display with the fantastic story of Excalibur and the somber realism of Taps.

The fully-digital brew-and-view theater serves up local craft brews along with its $4 features, making the movies even more refreshing. Just outside, the movie house’s vintage-neon facade spills its soft glow across a collection of Portland’s best eateries. Between the theater’s stars and the restaurants’ specialties, this night at the movies will be one to remember.