We continue our trip around Northwest part of USA. We left Seattle to search for summer in sunny California but on our way we visited a mysterious state Oregon. May be interesting to the fans of «The Twilight Saga», because the touching love story of Bella and Edward filmed here. By the way, wondering if you know that vampire can’t love, because his heart is dead… he never has a «desire».
1We chose Portland — the largest city in the state. Its history began in 1851. At that time, the land on which the modern city grounded, once belonged to two partners, each of whom wanted to call Portland differently. Like in the program “Heads and Tails,”(the ukrainian TV show), the dispute been decided by casting lots. Francis Pettigrew won the right to choose a name… and his partner Asa Lovejoy received $100 for a weekend. :) This historic coin, known as a Portland Penny, exhibited in the Oregon Historical Society museum. Pettigrew with a lack of fantasy decided to name the settlement after his hometown — Portland, Maine.
Unlike the Indians, people living here are not hunting anymore.
2The city is at the mouth of the Willamette River and Columbia River. Therefore, one of the unofficial names— The City Of Bridges. In fact, Portland has many informal names, the most common of them are: «Portlandia», «Soccer City», «The Clearing». However, the only official unofficial name — «City of Roses», because the local climate is perfect for growing these flowers, there is even a functioning institution.
A little away from downtown is located the second highest building in Portland — Bancorp Tower, residents gently call it “Big Pink”… The Big Pink offers the best view of the “think tank” of Portland.
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A good place (access to the Pacific Ocean through the Willamette and Columbia rivers,) contributed a lot to city’s active development. Portland remained the main port of the Pacific Northwest region for most of the 19th century, until Seattle motherfuckers built a deepwater marina and connected it to a fucking railway. We apologize for being rude, it’s said that this was a real quote of the Portland mayor William Mason.
7Local port remains the third largest in the turnover on US west coast and the biggest exporter of wheat, however the distance from this place to the Pacific Ocean is more than 130 km…But it’s nothing more than a consolation prize from local farmers, because port of Portland is almost the same as the port of Mariupol, comparing by container shipping.
Steel Bridge — one of the oldest bridges of the city. Considering its advanced age, only one branch of a light railway was laid.
8Fremont Bridge — the world’s second biggest arched bridge, through which interstate highway I-405 passes.
9Fremont Bridge was the largest arched bridge in the world until 2007, when «motherfuckers from China built fucking Caiyuanba Bridge…», this was the words of Mayor Tom Potter. A few more similar stories and Portland will be given a new unofficial name — «so-and-so city.»
10Well, let’s start our walk. As in San Francisco, street names duplicated on the sidewalk with Braille tiles. Wow, great concern for the blind bootless!
11There are a lot of contemporary art on the streets. This is one of 4 Dan Corson sculptures in Chinatown, the other three are almost the same. The inspiration for these sculptures became the carnivorous plant called Nepenthes. They say, they ate his mother-in-law, so already 10 years he’s been praising them in his works.
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Fire trucks are very beautiful in America. If we had such beautiful cars, the firemen would have never complained of low salary.
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Portland Streetcar Tram — one of the two city tram systems; another one is the light rail MAX, it connects the suburbs of Portland with the city.
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According to the results of the past fiscal year, some bus stops were shown to the roadway because people missed their bus while enjoying the nature and the carrier incurred losses.
20Another informal name of Portland and the surrounding area — Silicon Forest, similar to the famous Silicon Valley. Here the headquarters of many high-tech companies located, and young startups develop actively.
21Portland has always been the center of many subcultures: punks, male feminists, retrosexuals, nerds, eco-nerds and others. In 1990s new subculture began to appear and gain its strength — startupers. The collapse of the dot-coms decreased their ranks a little, but now they’re restoring their influence in the region.
To help you understand the scale, we took pictures of the queue of startupers to venture capital fund:
22Brainstorm before a pitch. They will only have two minutes to impress of investors, so every word is important.
23A luck has smiled to this startuper today, he got seed money and is meditating on the second round of funding.
24If you didn’t attract investors, don’t worry — there is always a possibility for good old crowd-funding.
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And we came to one of the main squares of the city Pioneer Courthouse Square named after the second oldest federal building west from the Mississippi River. Well, you know what Mayor Bernard Goldsmith said at his time?.. “These motherfuckers from Iowa built their fucking Courthouse only 26 years earlier!”.
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Hipsters are also involved in crowdfunding, but their target audience are tourists. As a reward, they embossed names of their sponsors on the pavement… well, they say so.
32How to distinguish hipster from startuper? Visually — very difficult, the only difference is in the accessories: hipster has an iPhone.
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However, in Portland hipsters can always find an object for investment, vintage furniture and records are good options.
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Portland hipsters are considering the experience of Dagestani colleagues and slowly begin to lower their skates.
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Order in the city is maintained by Mainstream Enforcement Administration. We were lucky to make a pic of their special operation. As we learned later, the hardest offense in Portland is consumption and distribution of un-crafted beer. Since the city has more than 40 private microbreweries.
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Other employers are not as careful, that’s why 8% of citizens go to work by bicycles. This is the highest percentage among major US cities, that ten times more than the national average.
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On the Hawthorne bridge, a counter of cyclists was installed, first in the United States. No one will take away this primacy from Portland.
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The city is clean, because the army of cleaners is watching for this, they are equipped with new high-tech tools.
47Another technological weapon — tablets «FREE». Cleaners use them for big piles of garbage, and they are gradually disapearing.
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Neighborhood gangs dominate here, police rarely looks into these areas. Spheres of influence are divided into quarters.
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Fortunately, such areas are not common in the city. Generally, Portland considered as the third safest city in the United States.
54Restaurant business is developing actively. Portland repeatedly won first place in the national rankings related to the food industry.
55The city received the title of worldwide best street food, according to CNN. There are now more than 600 food carts in the city. And even if sometimes their exterior is not very decent, they all adhere to sanitary standards and prepare tasty and delicious meals.
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Obviously, Portland citizens are experienced gourmets, because even in the wretched grocery you can find a huge stand with all kind of spices.
59The best remedy for depression — medicinal mushrooms. It’s difficult to get bored when you have diarrhea.
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Portland houses over 40 breweries — more than in any other city in the world. Because of this, several informal names of the city are promoting: Beervana, Brewtopia and Beertown. Of course, we couldn’t leave this topic without attention.
63In search of beer we entered the first bar and got to the Trivia night. It’s like «What? Where? When?» but without Alexander Druz and you can tipple during the game.
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