This handsome man was kind enough to rideshare/drive me to Seattle! I took a photo of his face and license plate, then sent it to my worried parents. (“Sahar! Riding with strangers! How could you?”) That way, if I ended up mysteriously disappearing, the detectives would know who did it. :-P
But along the way we stopped by Olympia, WA (because it’s just so great there!) and checked out their food cart lot. (Yes they have food carts).
I ended up grabbing some Assyrian (!?) food.
And then we posed in front of the Star Wars mural.
Five minutes before my ride to Seattle picked me up, I dropped by the Center For Intercultural Organizing, which I’m told is the best community organization in Portland.
I really didn’t have much time – and I interrupted an all-staff meeting! So I just said hello, chatted for a few minutes, and left.
If I ever come back to Portland, though, I’m staying for longer. They’re cool people!
I checked out makerspaces/hackerspaces in Portland, and I found Flux. It was really cool – a nice space downtown, explicitly feminist, and complete with a zines library (even a comic by Susie Cagle!) Through the people I met at Flux, I ended up on the adventure that lead me to Right To Dream Too.
A few days after I first stopped by, however, I visited again to grim news. The new leadership of the hackerspace (who just joined up 3 weeks prior) just realized that they had a big operating deficit – and rent was due in just a few days.
There was not much to be done – they needed $800 just to keep the space, and more besides every month to get a good budget balance.
As far as I can tell, the original crew that set up the space had bailed earlier – they had wanted it to be a more “radical” space and didn’t want to deal with the hassle of recruiting outsiders to keep it financially viable. (Of course, I could be totally wrong on that. Just one story I heard).
After casting a sad look around the space, we went for pizza. I just checked their website a few minutes ago – looks like the end really did come for Flux:
Portland is known for its local craft beers. But I don’t like beer! What is a fellow to do?
Distillery tours, of course!
We went on a walking tour of 5 different distilleries, each with a different take on what a “hipster distillery” could be.
New Deal Distillery (the first photo) is clean, shiny, and into typography.
The next was run by asian (Japanese) immigrants – a small room full of rice-based brews.
Next, we went to a family-run distillery just getting set up, strangely enough, in a small office park. It was weird – you just walk down some normal-looking corporate hallways, and then BOOM! Vats, etc. It wasn’t fully ready yet, so we get a bunch of cocktails and learned about business from the friendly woman who set it up with her husband and daughter.
This place had a biker vibe. Dark clothes, leather, whiskey.
The last place (the later photos) was the original distillery around. The people behind the counter were really cool. I had the familiar problem of getting along well with a man, and then worrying I was accidentally flirting with him. I suppose I have that worry with women as well. Except often when I realize it I decide not to worry about it and “what if I’m flirting with them? That means we could go out maybe!” Whereas there isn’t that potential upside with guys. Anyways, thanks for listening to me ramble.
Hats off to Monique Teal for organizing a great trip!
P.S. Check out the sort of fliers that abound in Portland:
I checked some email, woke up slowly, and generally was a slow loris until my phone beeped a reminder: “Arts BBQ? At That Gallery. In 1 hour”
Oh my! I grabbed my gear and headed out to the bus stop. I could check out that cool art gallery that I kept ending up hanging out at, and there’d be food. All by noon, when all my other plans started around 4ish.
So there I am, waiting at the bus stop, sitting next to this guy in a funny/classy hat. He’s loudly excited about the upcoming bluegrass festival, and loudly *not* a fan of the blues festival happening that night. “Blues sucks man. It’s just so easy to play. The same chords over and over again.”
“Okay guy. I’ll talk to you,” thought I.
What a character. So exuberant. So pleased with life. I want to get to that point – chortling over little jokes, slapping my knee of emphasis, just crackling with energy.
He’s a musician, but also an art manager. The guy who reps local artists, sort of thing.
Turns out he was heading the same way I was! I invite him to the art bbq. He comes! We check out the exibits – 50 different takes on the american flag.
That was fun. I get a vegan dog eventually, hang out with a few of the worker/curators, etc. Meet some cool people. Then it’s off to the next adventure!
Sumana, a friend from Wikimedia, says she has time to chat on IRC. Man, I love the Wikimedia Foundation. What a great bunch of people – and they stick to their guns and use open standards of communication as much as possible.
Hurry to the closest cafe that is open on the 4th and seems to have wifi.
The glare hides how classy this joint is.
Sumana has lots of interesting things to say.
You know, I might indeed enjoy life as a UU pastor! Or possibly even a Rabbi. :-)
Then I’m off again. To a party!
[Unfortunately, no pic here]
I meet up with Sarah, my host at the time, at the surprise birthday / not-at-all-a-surprise barbeque at her friend’s house. It was fun. I met a middle-aged libertarian, hearty, home-made-sausage grilling lesbian couple (the louder of which taught plus-sized yoga). They were fun. (“I bought the whole cow! Gave it to the butcher, and he made me 71 pounds of sausage!”)
Soon, everyone leaves for the park, and I walk over to party #2 at Monique’s. Most people have left, but I hang out with a cool handful of folks. We talk about life, being a lawyer, Portland, and the Oregon Student Association. Then eat an American Flag Cake:
On my first day in Portland, I walked due east, over the river. I was not impressed. There’s a strong “concrete wasteland” vibe right as you cross the river east, and the stores afterwards are often bars or stripclubs. Not my scene.
The first interesting place I found was an art gallery. The curator/worker/person there wasn’t doing much, so we chatted for 45 minutes or so about Portland, life, happiness, etc. I said I might stop by for the 4th of July Barbeque and art show they were going to put on. (Spoiler alert! I did).
Here’s what the gallery looked like:
Then ambled south. Being a man who takes my metaphores seriously, I stopped and smelled the flowers that were overflowing from a house’s garden plot.
They smelled heavenly. Amazingly heavenly. So, in full flower bliss, I walked a little further, saw the owner outside on his porch, and said “man, your flowers smell amazing.” “Thanks dude!”
We talked about Portland, community, and life for about 20 minutes before I kept walking. Before I left, though, I took note of something he casually mentioned:
“Yeah, there’s all sorts of interesting places around this area. We’ve got a makerspace just down the block. And an anarchist cafe”
The Cafe is pretty sweet. It’s completely worker-owned AND unionized to boot. (Which seems a bit like overkill, but rad nonetheless). It hosts all sorts of groups in the community. I’ve noticed the unhoused using its wifi, which stays on all day and night and is accessible from the outside. To top it all off, the cafe has legit nice beer and fun names for their food, like the Nihilist Cheesesteak.
As I walked in, I noticed a group of people hanging out in what seemed like a meeting. They didn’t seem to friendly so I went to the counter. After a lovely discussion with the woman working the desk, she introduced me to everyone. They were having a meeting of the local branch of Black Rose – the very same federation that Rochester’s Red and Black is a member of. Small world!
To make it the world even smaller, the people there (who ended up being super friendly) not only knew about Rochester Red and Black, but even knew Colin O’Malley from when he did his nationwide speaking tour.
Turns out that Red and Black also has housing above the cafe, and we all stayed up late into the night talking about the local political scene, radicals-as-subculture vs radicals-as-organizers, history, online organizing, reagan, you name it.
What a fun bunch of people. You should definitely check out R&B if you’re ever in town.
Their community radio station, KBOO, seems actually legit. They have staff. They have a budget. They have the feel of a college radio station, only for a city of 700k people. Plus they have awesome murals outside the walls.
When having the “should I live here” conversation with strangers, they often ask what I’m looking for. I tell them:
“I’m looking for a real community. Where people at least know of each other, where everyone is working on a cool project, and you can run into your friends on the street and pull them to lunch and plot.”
According to everyone who hung out there (and my own sense of the vibe), KBOO is a lot like that. I was really impressed. Plus, right next door was the worker-owned bike shop, which has a rocking mural of its own.
One day, I hung out at Flux, a feminist hackerspace/makerspace in downtown Portland.
Here’s what it looks like:
Desks!
3D printers! Soldering irons! Etc!
Couches!
NOTE: Sadly, it looks like Flux is having trouble making financial ends meet, so last time I checked they were possibly about to be evicted and feverishly looking for a solution. Sadface.
Back to the story!
At Flux, I met a man named Kevin. Kevin is intense. Kevin took me out to lunch at this place called “Sisters of the Traveling Road”. It’s a sort of soup kitchen, I guess. Lunch is a 1.50, and you can earn credit by doing chores there.
It was not cool to photo the people there, so I just captured a bit of ceiling:
During lunch, Kevin told me about how he worked with Richard Stallman back in the day at the MIT AI lab, how he’s working on a bunch of software projects to benefit the radical community in Portland, how he co-founded a huge hardware business in the 80’s before it was destroyed by the rise of the MIPS instruction set, and how he helped set up Right 2 Dream Too (R2D2), the tent village / houseless encampment not too far from here.
Kevin is pretty un-googleable, so I’m not sure how true any of that was. He’s definitely a smart, interesting guy though. And that spurred me to check out this R2D2 that everyone kept talking about.
R2D2 is actually super baller!
Again, I didn’t want to be rude and photo much of the camp, but here’s a peek at the entrance:
And an older photo I found online that don’t seem to violate anyone’s privacy:
(Note that the camp has changed since then. The middle tents are gone, replaced by large communal tents for “walk-ins”. New tents have gone up for the kitchen, computer lab, storage warehouse, etc)
The story, as I understand it:
Years ago, this guy had a property that he couldn’t use. The city wouldn’t let him give it away, they wouldn’t let him use it as a parking lot, and he didn’t have the money to build ontop of it. So in an offhand comment, he told a reporter, “I might as well give this place to the homeless and let them use it”. Right To Survive, a local direct-action group, saw the interview, called him up, and asked if he was serious. He was.
Early October, 2011, right as Occupy became visible in Portland, Right to Survive leased the lot from the owner for 1$, and set up a tent city. At first, things were pretty loose and flexible. Occupy was a godsend – they distracted the police, and were able to do visible and rowdy actions to save the camp if needed.
Eventually, Right 2 Dream Too became more established. They now have an elected board. Local police can’t search the city without a warrant. 108 former members have gone on to permanent housing. Walk-ins are welcome to stay in large communal tents, as long as they follow the camp rules (which include progressive language, like “no transphobia”, etc). After a walk-in stays around for a while, is generally liked, and does some chores, members can choose to accept them as a new member to the camp, with new privileges, a tent, blankets, etc.
People escaping domestic abuse are particularly welcome, and the camp has a strict policy of respecting people’s privacy from the outside. (If someone comes looking for “Jamie”, the person volunteering at the gate will refuse to say whether “Jamie” even stays at the camp, much less bring her forth.
It’s an amazing, friendly, resilient, and functioning community. And, like I said, people are using it as a way to escape being unhoused. It’s inspiring, it’s led by the homeless themselves, and apparently organizations from around the country are visiting to learn from the model.
The people I met at the camp were similarly warm and friendly. I learned about a woman estranged from her family and lacking government ID. Without ID, she couldn’t get a job. And without her family vouching for her, she couldn’t get an ID. At the time we spoke, she was seriously contemplating getting arrested, just so her mugshot could serve as enough ID to be able to get her passport back.
Another person I met was thoughtful, intellectual, and spoke like an organizer. He’s actually “graduated” from the camp to secure housing, but he hangs with everyone else at the camp from time to time. His main priority: finding ways to extend the camp to more people.
What a great time I had there. Hours after leaving, I still felt more connected to my fellow humans, more likely to say hello to odd and beaten-down-looking strangers, just more alive.
Anarchist Bookstores, Sudden Friendship, and cod extravaganza.
Olympia, Washington has 3 bookstores. One deals with antiques. The other is more “modern”. The last is run by anarchists.
It’s pretty chill!
Complete with Zine collection:
And snarky signage:
I talked to the co-owner, Sky. He founded the bookstore with his buddies during college, and it’s been around for 14(?) years. It doesn’t seem like the store has ever been much in the black (har har), but lately business has been really slow.
As an aside: I say “Anarchist bookstore”, but I didn’t get a sense of what that means in practice. The shop definitely has an ideological lean, so you can buy radical books. It also hosts a few community events. (Three in the next week or two, even). But I didn’t get a sense that the bookstore was that connected with the wider community, or even “activist community”. Could be completely off-base here.
The shop was nice, and I chatted with the owner, a volunteer worker, and even bought a few books as gifts.
The whole encounter made me really appreciate Back Pages Books, the amazing local bookstore in Waltham, MA. Alex Green, the owner of Backpages, isn’t the sort to festoon the store with red and black flags. However, he does invite great authors to give book talks, and a deep relationship with some faculty at Brandeis University (he stocks their coursebooks, they send business his way). Lastly, through his perch at Backpages, he does a great job in “community organizing” all the small business owners on his street. They’re supporting progressive policies, he’s in meetings with the mayor all the time, etc.
Alex is actually a great role model in that sense. What a nice life he has – the autonomy and passion of running your own business, with the strategizing and good works of community organizing. Maybe I should look into doing something like that myself.
Okay, back to the story!
Sudden friendship
As Cece and I were browsing books to buy, Austin, the volunteer at the store, came over, and invited me out for a drink. I saw his drink, and raised him a dinner with Cece, and we all went out for tacos.
In Austin’s words:
Yesterday, as I was doing some volunteering at Last Word Books, I had the pleasure of meeting two really awesome people. We spoke of philosophy, meaning, and happiness among other things. This has literally been my fantasy for so long and it has come true. Cecelia and Sahar, thank you guys for being a couple of badass mofos. You guys rule!
We did talk about life, and happiness, and so on. I pretty much forget what everyone said. As far I can remember, I learned that:
I think this journey I’m on is easy (I exchange money I already have for travel and food, and also talk to strangers). But from another point of view, it’s brave and to be admired. (I’m still not convinced, but Austin was pretty adamant about it)
There are three types of good: stopping or slowing evil, building structural alternatives, and inspiration/ a shift in consciousness. I can, and should, find all 3 in my life, instead of just the 1st.
Cod Extravaganza
After all that, Cece and I bought a *ton* of cod. I cut it into thirds and made three types: cod spiced as if it were meat (red), cod spiced as if it were pizza (green), and cod spiced the way that the recipe said to (white):
Surprise! Following directions led to the tastiest fish.
Cece’s partner Aaron, and their mutual friend [aah how embarrassing I forgot her name!], were on hand to help cook / eat.
Olympia has a pretty large anarchist scene, apparently. They’ve got fliers all over town. When I first walked around though, I thought the anarchist scene was much larger and stranger than it really is, though.
There were these people walking downtown. You could see them all over. They all were wearing a button-down shirt uniform, and above their right breast was a stylized A. Kind of like this:
“Wow!” said I. “The radical left here sure is organized.” “And really civic minded, they keep picking up trash and so on”.
NOPE.
Turns out the chamber of commerce or something has a “downtown ambassadors” program to “keep downtown clean and nice”.
Huh.
Most local stores had a sign up: “Another Business That Supports The People’s House”. The People’s House, I learned, is a homeless shelter of some kind. I tried to track it down, but it doesn’t have a physical location yet. Quite different from Right To Dream Too, which I would discover (to my delight) just a few days later…
I was in Olympia to visit an old friend, and during the day when she was working, I walked around downtown. It was awesome.
Part One: Coffee Connections lead to Chill Christians
We start off our journey with amazing single-source ethical coffee from Olympia Coffee Roasters.
See that photo hotness? I was trying out Google’s Lens Blur feature on their camera app.
Check out their backroom coffee operation:
The barista recommended I check out the Artisan Well, which is a natural spring that gives fresh free water to the whole town. Rocking!
Here’s the well:
Yep; it’s a pipe. As I got there, a woman (skinny, all-black clothes, tattoo-festooned, lives on a farm outside town) complained about how the city was trying to “develop the spring”.
“It used to be just a pipe! And that’s how we liked it!”
(Now, it’s a pipe with some mosaic around it. And a barrel)
She was pretty cool – she had many plastic buckets to fill, since she doesn’t get running water in her farm outside of town.
She leaves, I chat with a few other people, and then a couple about my age starts filling up a ton of plastic buckets as well.
After a few introductions, I ask that big question that tends to either get great conversation or confused looks:
“So! What makes you content in life?”
The man looks at me, sits down on the bench next to me, and says:
“Well, Sahar, what brings me joy is being loved by my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”
Five years ago, I don’t know how I would’ve reacted. Thanks to a pilgrimage to Missouri to hang out with Zack Exley, however, it wasn’t weird (or even that unexpected) at all.
Me: “Hey, do you guys like Rob Bell or Shane Claiborne?”
Him: “Yeah, I love Shane! And I *hate Rob Bell!”
Her: “Oh, silly! You don’t hate him. Hey, how did you know about Shane Claiborne?”
Turns out that the two of them are christians in a “loving, social justice” oriented sense. They build schools in Cambodia and so on. And their lives are fantastically happy! They have a purpose, they have a community that supports them, they know who their friends are and they are secure in teh world. We ended up talking about all sorts of things for over half an hour.
This is the story of how I traveled from Portland Oregon to Olympia Washington with a crazy crew of characters.
The setup:
Cece, who is amazing, lives in Olympia, and I made plans to visit her.
“How do I get there, Cece?”
“Don’t worry, just get a rideshare!”
Okay, so I go on Craigslist and find a ride. I know I’m not the only passenger, so I assume we’re going in a van or something.
NOPE.
Yep, he pulls up in a schoolbus. A schoolbus full of WONDER.
Prayer flags. A Nyan cat. A table between a few bus seats. Quirky musician folks. And a bed rounding out the back.
The people on the bus were also characters. Eye-patch guy (a self-proclaimed asshole). Chuckling longhair fiddler. Intense older man who is designing a super-plane. And the driver, a late-20’s hip dude who brought us all together. He bought this bus and renovated it into a sort of RV for camping purposes.
They were all headed to a fiddling festival in Washington, and I was hitching a ride until Olympia. We talked about philosophy of mind, that guy’s idea for an amphibious, beautiful, egg-shaped plane, divorces, and Irish history.
Eventually they dropped me off at Cece’s place and I never heard from them again.
