Portland Bound

PORTLAND — At 30,000 feet, you can see a layer of L.A. drinking water coating the Sierra — our reservoir, our piney and magnificent filtration system. Think it’s been a good winter that way. Then again, I’ve always been a glass-is-half-full kind of guy.

By the way, I have a theory: Airline coffee never fully leaves the body. It’s digestible only in tiny bursts, like other micro-plastics. Mostly, it swirls in what engineers call a “closed loop.”

Still, I request a cup from the flight attendant. After all, a guy’s gotta loop.

See, football is over and tax season begins. I fear my annual post-gridiron funk, followed by the usual February rut. Not a bad time to hop a flight to the Pacific Northwest, Gate B4 out of Burbank, cozy as a phone booth. I tell you, you meet the nicest people when they’re accidentally standing on your foot.

As we all know, commercial air travel means a loss of humanity, of civility, of comfort, though down below us is Donner Pass, where real atrocities have happened, worse even than airline coffee and wooden swizzle sticks.

So, I’m all smiles….trust me, total smiles. Some 950 miles to the north, Portland beckons, a town of unconventional and chronic pleasures. 

By nature, big cities interest me, almost every one offers something special — a good pool hall, for instance, or oysters smoked in butter and cream.

Jeeeez, suddenly I’m channeling Anthony Bourdain?

Yet, like him, I’ll note that our wonderful country is being homogenized to an uncomfortable degree; really, it borders on desecration. Best to celebrate these funky and original old towns. And there are few cities with more scruffy character than Portland, Oregon.

You don’t visit Portland so much as you stick it under your tongue and savor it. Outside New Orleans, I’ve never seen a food outpost like this. In Portland, it’s as if the great grub finds you.

Dining out here is not a stuffy, pretentious experience, as it often is in L.A. or New York. Here, they eat, really eat. They don’t care that their rib cage no longer shows or that their Lulus don’t fit them like wet paint. Not sure they even have those here.

Mostly, they just pick up another flannel shirt at Costco, 12 bucks.

Trust me, I admire Portland the way Robert Frost loved country lanes and overnight dustings of snow.

Have to confess that escalating costs make me ponder alternative locations like this. My sis, Eleanor, a longtime denizen, is appalled that a little house next to hers is going for $400k. Welcome, I suppose, to 1988.

In any case, I am here for a glorious week of seeing my sister through a gruesome foot surgery, bringing  her meds, her phone, re-heating soup, running errands, taking out the trash bins, walking her slurpy little dog, Gigi. 

So far, none of this stuff seems beyond my skill set. But the week is young and I — at last glance — am not.

As Dr. Mercer does his thing, I duck into the Biscuits Cafe in Happy Valley, a steamy and inviting breakfast joint that serves heaping slabs of perfect hash browns, perhaps the only reason I bother to wake up each morning.

As I pay, the server says “God bless you.” Wow. So bold. That could easily get you fired in Los Angeles, where blessings are often discouraged. 

Up here, they apparently still honor God a bit, at least in little pockets northeast of the city.

As with any place, Portland is best defined by the food it serves: creative, artful, affordable, sustainable, magical, moving and graced by the gods manning the grill tops.

Breakfast as early Mass. Food as holy water.

Once a year, I reach out on behalf of the Erskine Family Compassion Fund, which honors my late wife and son. The money goes to struggling families across Los Angeles, providing everything from blankets, to books, to financial support. Any amount helps. Click here to donate.  If you prefer to send a check, please make it out to LCPC Parent Ed, and send to LCPC Parent Ed, 626 Foothill Boulevard, La Canada, CA 91011. Thank you.

Coming Saturday: Cupid. He’s such a little punk.