Portland Spoke – The Official Blog of Travel Portland – Travel Portland's Staff Blog

Photo by Mark Stalcup, via Flickr

The holiday season isn’t over yet! This Saturday, Portland has plenty of ways to say goodbye to 2011 and hello to a brand new year. Here’s a quick round-up of resources to help you plan the last night of the year:

Portland Food and Drink has a comprehensive list of 45 restaurants offering New Year’s Eve dinners and special events. Many of the city’s top eateries are in on the action (think Olympic Provisions, Aviary, Grüner …) and there are even a few places serving up New Year’s Day brunch.

CitySearch found some eclectic parties and events, from Champagne at the Hilton to casual comedy at Helium and free video games at Ground Kontrol.

For those who want to dance, rock or eat their way into 2012, Willamette Week breaks down the options.

Of course, this is just the tip of the celebratory iceberg — if you have other favorite Portland NYE events, please let us know about them!

Behind the scenes: Douglas Derrick (Nostrana) mixes a Manhattan for Mike Thelin (Feast Portland) and my colleague Barbara Steinfeld.

Working with our friend Mike Thelin — co-founder of the much-anticipated food and drink festival, Feast Portland (Sept. 20-23, 2012) — we recently wrapped up some fun video shoots at three leading restaurants, which shared their recipes for chocolate hazelnut toffee (Country Cat), butternut squash soup (Metrovino) and a seasonal Manhattan (Nostrana).

Visit the “Flavors of Portland” tab on our Facebook page to download and share the recipes, watch the videos and enter to win two tickets to Feast. (Must enter by Jan. 6, 2012.)

For 40 years The Benson Hotel has displayed a “Gingerbread Masterpiece” in the lobby for guests and passersby to admire. Chef Dave Diffendorfer has created the display for the last 17 consecutive years, with fantasy worlds ranging in theme from Santa’s North Pole to an Austrian hillside town to The Benson Hotel itself.  Each year Chef Diffendorfer crafts, molds and carves 100 lbs. of gingerbread and up to 25 lbs. of white chocolate and marzipan into a spectacle to behold.  This year’s display, A Castle in Blue, is one stop to check off your list while shopping or visiting Santa in downtown Portland.  Merry, merry!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year — the weekend of the Crafty Wonderland Super Colossal Holiday Sale! I know I’m not the only local who’s planning to start and finish all my holiday shopping in one fell swoop at this massive event. On Saturday and Sunday (Dec. 10-11), more than 250 vendors will pack the Oregon Convention Center’s Hall C, selling everything from handmade jewelry to fine art, locally crafted clothing to supplies for crafting your own creations. I am especially looking forward to perusing my friend Jolie’s felt flower accessories and my talented colleague Amy’s encaustic paintings and “Pin Up Cups.”

If I have any steam left after shopping and socializing at Crafty Wonderland, I plan to check out the city’s newest holiday craft fair, The Portland Bazaar. Organized in part by Design*Sponge blogger extraordinaire Grace Bonney, this sale also runs Saturday and Sunday, and is at Sandbox Studio (420 N.E. Ninth Ave.), just a five-minute drive from the Oregon Convention Center.

Bring on the holidays – the pop-up shops are back! Four destination shopping experiences, available only in November and December, are now open for business throughout downtown.

Boys’ Fort, a fantastical venue created by two theater designers, offers everything from salvaged wood tables and reclaimed lighting to men’s wallets and women’s bangles. The nonprofit Trillium Artisans helps up-and-coming artisans market their wares, which are all crafted from repurposed materials; check out the upcycled jewelry, toys, garden art and the baby booties made from surplus Pendleton wool. Downtown Artistry offers indie crafts and ceramics (and classes for the DIY shopper) and Saturday Market Annex provides an on-site artisan workshop and a daily central-city complement to Portland Saturday Market on the waterfront. Nearby, don’t miss Portland Design Collective and Crafty Wonderland – former pop-up shops that are now permanent storefronts offering fashion, jewelry and crafts year-round.

Looking for a motherlode of unique gifts? Clear your calendar for Dec. 10-11 when two holiday fairs celebrate Portland’s creative community. Crafty Wonderland’s annual Super Colossal Holiday Sale features more than 200 artisans decking the halls of the Oregon Convention Center with handmade jewelry, toys and housewares. Nearby, the Portland Bazaar launches this year at Sandbox Studio with a curated collection of handcrafted goods by more than 100 vendors. Offerings include books, music, art and (this being Portland) a bicycle-building demonstration. A shuttle will ferry shoppers between the fairs, while food carts will keep intrepid gift-givers fueled and toasting tax-free holiday shopping.

The holiday season just got a little merrier in Downtown Portland with the openings of several new businesses.  Some are local businesses, some are national, but all of them offer tax-free shopping and dining.

Nike Portland: Feel like you’re walking back into your high school gym at the new concept store from Nike, an Oregon-based company.

Via Tribunali: Seattle’s popular wood-fired pizza empire opens its first Portland location on Nov. 15.

Bunk Sandwiches: The third outpost of this beloved Portland sandwich shop is perfect fuel for on-the-go shoppers.

Sephora: Beauty lovers, your time has arrived — Sephora has opened a stand-alone store across from Pioneer Place shopping center.

PDX Pop-Ups: For the third year, temporary stores featuring local designers are swinging open their doors until Dec. 31.

http://downtownportland.org/downtown-events/good-stuff/pdx-pop-up-shops-2011/

How do you get in the holiday spirit? Well, elves help and so do ghosts of Christmases Past.  Somehow Rat Kings and Nutcrackers figure and so do Bing Crosby, a Red Ryder BB gun and maybe an angel or two. We can’t guarantee a white Christmas in Portland, but there’s plenty of holiday cheer, with or without the snow.

"White Christmas" at Lakewood Theatre

“White Christmas”
Nov. 4 through Dec. 18
Lakewood Theatre, 368 S. State St., Lake Oswego

The great Irving Berlin movie musical has been converted to the stage, and though Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney won’t be there, Lakewood musicals have a good reputation, so the title song will be in good hands.

“Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol”
Nov. 15 through Dec. 24
Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 S.W. Morrison St.

The Dickens tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the ghosts of Christmas has gotten a serious shaking from Seattle playwright John Longenbaugh. Instead of Scrooge, a reclusive Sherlock Holmes is on the scene to deduce the facts of a particular visitation by a peculiar trio of ghosts. The show stars two of Portland’s favorite actors, Michael Mendelson and Todd Van Voris, as Holmes and Watson.

“A Christmas Story”
Nov. 20 through Dec. 24
Portland Center Stage, 128 N.W. 11th Ave.

This is the stage adaptation of Jean Shepherd’s great Christmas reminiscence about growing up in the 1950s, when a bar of soap in the mouth was the antidote to bad language and the Little Orphan Annie radio program was just about the best thing going — except for that Red Ryder BB gun, which Ralphie Parker desperately hopes is under the tree. This popular comedy returns for another season at Portland’s biggest theater.

“Ahhh HA!”
Nov. 26 through Dec. 30
Do Jump!, Echo Theatre, 1515 S.E. 37th Ave.

Do Jump artistic director Robin Lane has explored the intersection of physical comedy, acrobatics and the dream world for more than 30 years, and this holiday show assembles the best of her research into one family-friendly holiday show.

“The Santaland Diaries”
Nov. 29 through Dec. 31
Portland Center Stage, 128 N.W. 11th Ave.

The career of humorist David Sedaris started with an essay he wrote about his experience playing an elf in the Santaland at Macy’s in New York. He read the essay on NPR’s “Morning Edition” and it’s become a holiday tradition. It’s been a hit at Center Stage for the past two seasons, and it returns this year with Jim Lichtscheidl playing Sedaris in the one-man show. (more…)

As usual, the city’s choirs offer a choice of performances of Handel’s famous “Messiah” oratorio (technically an Easter story), and plenty of other holiday-related sounds abound as well. But by mid-December we’ll likely be overloaded with carols and other holiday tunes, so it’s nice to know that Portland’s vibrant classical music scene offers both spiritual and secular music alternatives to standard holiday fare.

Schubert’s “Winterreise”
Nov. 4
Ken Beare and Maria Choban, Community Music Center, 3350 S.E. Francis St.

The dynamic tenor and pianist present a heated new translation (Warning: not for kids!) of what may be the great song cycle ever written, Franz Schubert’s tale of lost love, Winterreise, which the pair are subtitling “Love’s Lost Journey into Frostbite.”

The Von Trapp Children

“A Von Trapp Family Christmas”
Nov. 26
Oregon Symphony, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway

The famous singing family returns with the sound of holidays.

“Winter’s Voice”
Dec. 2
Portland State University choirs, Lincoln Recital Hall, 1620 S.W. Park Ave.

The school’s reinvigorated choral program (including the Chamber Choir, Man Choir and Woman Choir) sings a very affordable program of wintry music from Russia and Estonia, and classical masters from Bach to Debussy.

Tallis Scholars

Tallis Scholars
Dec. 4
Chamber Music Northwest, St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1739 N.W. Couch St.

The choir has been at the forefront of early music choral groups since its founding in 1973, and they’ll bring a mostly holiday-themed program of both Renaissance and more recent music to Portland.

“A Holiday Gift of Music”
Dec. 4
Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Mt. Hood Community College Theater, 26000 S.E. Stark St., Gresham

This reasonably priced concert features Prokofiev’s famous kids’ classic “Peter and the Wolf,” with puppets by Tears of Joy theater.

“Winter Bells”
Dec. 4
Metropolitan Youth Symphony, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway

The Cleveland High School chorus and handbell choir join the young players for holiday sounds.

See more holiday music recommendations >>

As the holidays draw nearer, Portland offers even more musical celebrations!

“Gospel Christmas”
Dec. 9-11
Oregon Symphony, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway

Charles Floyd and the Northwest Community Gospel Choir return for the season’s most exuberant sounds.

“Glory of Christmas”
Dec. 11,16-18
Oregon Repertory Singers, St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1716 N.W. Davis St.

Under new director Ethan Sperry, the venerable chorus sings favorite carols, plus modern and traditional Hannukah songs, sacred music by Benjamin Britten, Anton Bruckner, Henryk Gorecki, Portland’s Joan Szymko and more.

The Canadian Tenors

“The Canadian Tenors Christmas”
Dec. 16
Oregon Symphony, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway

The Oprah-approved quartet sings holiday tunes.

Handel’s “Messiah”
Dec. 16-18
Portland Baroque Orchestra, First Baptist Church, Southwest Taylor at 12th Ave.

If you can catch only one Messiah, PBO’s is the truest, because it uses the instruments, tunings and performance styles closest to the composer’s intentions — and it sounds magnificent, especially abetted by the sublime voices of one of the West’s finest choruses, Cappella Romana, and soloists from New York, Boston and Toronto. A young people’s concert on Dec. 19 features excerpts for shorter attention spans. (more…)

Pioneer Place photo by Debbie Lusk, via Flickr

Although it’s only October, I’m one of those people who shops for holiday gifts year-round. Sometimes, that means that I have to find that perfect gift twice, because I get so excited to give the first gift that I can’t hang on to it all the way to December.

Thankfully, there’s no sales tax in Oregon, which means my money goes that much further. We want our visitors to take advantage of that great savings too, which is why we brought back our Perks + $50 promotion from now through Dec. 30.

Come visit Portland from Nov. 1-Dec. 30 and book a two-night stay at a participating Portland Perks hotel and you’ll get free overnight parking (an avg. savings of $25/night downtown); free continental breakfast; a discount-packed coupon book with savings on shopping, dining, attractions and performances; AND $50 cash upon check-in to get you started on that gift list. Who knows, you might even be able to pick something up for yourself.

Remember, you can only book this package on travelportland.com. Happy shopping!