coffee
From Alex's bookmarks I found Robby Russel's two-part series on Portland coffee shops and cafes: part 1 covers Costellos Travel Caffe, Urban Grind, Fireside Coffee Lodge, Redwing Coffee & Baking; part 2 reviews Pier Coffee, Backspace and Three Lions Bakery. Of the ones he reviews, I have only been to Backspace, which has video games in the back, some classic and some contemporary. He hasn't reviewed Portland Coffee House on Broadway, which has sweet wifi, eclectic music, and an interesting mix of suburbanites who get takeout and relatively less haughty regulars who stick around for a little while.
I try to go visit my friends there once a year, but it didn't work out in 2006. Things might have changed since the last time, but the next time I do go, Robby has given me some ideas for places to hang out.
Sacha, citing my plan to give up Coke for all of next month: “the caffeine intake of a litre of Coca-Cola is about equal to a cup of well-brewed coffee. Since the drug is second on earth to alcohol in terms of how many people it has been clinically tested on, there doesn't appear to be any adverse effects when taken in moderation over long periods of time. Even Coca-Cola, as a whole, has endured about 80 years without any significant horror stories. The worst of their public relations disasters was of course when they switched to the new Coke formula.”
A block away from Pioneer Courthouse Square and close to pretty much everything downtown, the Portland Coffee House is a nice little hangout I went to three times in four days, once just to test out the free, open wi-fi without purchasing anything. I'm a mocha kind of guy—something about the combination of chocolate, caffeine and hot beverage turns my brain on for the rest of the day—and the mocha was good as was the plain bagel with cream cheese, though they did make me put my own cream cheese on the thing. It's a cool atmosphere with comfy chairs and a place to people-watch at the windows.
A sister duo consisting of the guitarist and very sexy bass player (the girl playing the standup electric bass—competently I might add—was sexy; instruments are not soulful or sexy, but the people playing them can be) was playing cover songs and originals one night that I was there. It was fairly obvious which songs were the originals, but as sappy love songs go, they were quite good. When there was no live performances, the music they played from CDs was squarely on the hip side of things, their playing a Neil Young CD before playing an instrumental hip-hop CD, and the morning I was there some cool glitch-pop (think Postal Service but a little less twentysomething white boy angst).
They didn't seem to mind me spending a couple hours there with all of my luggage and having my laptop plugged in while I ripped the tracks from the CDs I purchased over the weekend. It was not unusual to see people hanging out at the Portland Coffee House for longer than we stayed i.e. they were there when we came and stayed when we left. The crowd was fairly diverse, too: Cute Punk Girls (tm) mixed with well-dressed suburbanites and office workers and whatever-category-I-fit-into (t-shirt and jeans foreigners, maybe). At the very least, it's recommended as a good place to wait for friends on a Saturday night after seeing a movie at a cool combination theatre and pub.
A note: I was unsatisfied with the search engine results for Portland Coffee House and its variations of spacing. But like I said, the wi-fi was free and open and bountiful, the atmosphere is cool, and they didn't hassle anybody for staying there for 2 hours after only buying a mocha and bagel. Not me at least.