With all due respect, empathy and consideration for the rights of property owners, I must confess to being fascinated with graffiti. I know it's not "okay" for people to deface property, but still: it appeals to my love of stark urban graphics that deliver a slap upside the eyeballs.
Here's a recent favorite:
It only lasted a few days; the garage door is now back to a uniform shade of pea green.
But yesterday! As I was wandering down random streets with Petra tugging at her leash, I saw another one of the same, the letters G R O W glaring out against a brick facade. Alas, I didn't have my camera. I'm going to try to snap it today, if it is still there....
I only hope this doesn't mean something awful and make me regret posting it.
Happy Friday! Now get out there and kick this weekend into shape.
There's a place in Portland that I like to think of as my Other living room: the main floor lobby in the Ace Hotel on Stark Street. If you could see it, you would want it to be your Other living room, too. Here's why:
- It is lined with cushy, olive green couches and has funky salvage-y pieces scattered around just so.
- It has a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf filled with books.
- It has a Photo Booth. Who doesn't like a Photo Booth?
- It has a door that opens into Stumptown Coffee, which might be the best coffee on the planet. The espresso is smooth and creamy, rich and dark without a hint of bitterness.
- Stumptown Coffee sells a cookie that might be the best cookie on the planet. When I wrote that I wasn't that interested in food these days, I meant to write "... with the exception of the chewy dark chocolate cookie at Stumptown in Portland, Oregon." This cookie has a crackly top and a chocolatey, walnut-studded interior that resolves into ooey-chewy goodness inside your mouth. Is it worth booking a trip to Portland for? Oooh, yeah.
This is the lobby-living room inside the Ace Hotel:
This is the counter at Stumptown, above which swirl the aromas of roasted espresso beans and smoky dark chocolate and pine needles:
Okay , it doesn't smell like pine needles. But this is Portland, land of pine & fir trees, and doesn't it sound poetic?
If you've read this blog for a while, you know that I have a room in my house that I affectionately call The Smallest Art Gallery in the World. It's not fancy, and the art isn't groundbreaking or revolutionary, but it makes me happy, and that's good enough for me.
For the past four months, I've had the "Morocco" exhibit up, composed of photos from my January trip, along with a few Moroccan-themed paintings, a pair of hand-embroidered slippers, Moroccan candlesticks, and a few other odds and ends. The only blogger who took me up on my offer to stop by for a look was the lovely Tea, who arrived with a packet of delectable peach tea as her "entrance fee." I was charmed, and the tea was wonderful; I'm still enjoying it.
For the past few weeks, I've been meaning to pull everything off of the walls and hang a fresh "exhibit" but things have been rather hectic. Last week, I finally got around to it.
This time, the theme is Type. Words. Letters. Numbers.
It has recently come to my attention that certain People In the Know don't know about Tastespotting.
Silly me, I thought everyone knew about it.
It's been my top-of-the-morning read for months and months and months. I've sucked down countless cups of tea while perusing its happy Polaroid-like snaps of delicious food and drinks and interesting foodie tidbits. It finds all the best of the foodsphere for me... what's not to love?
I wholeheartedly recommend it, with one caveat: if you already find that minutes and hours mysteriously disappear as you happily click from blog to blog, high as a kite, you'll quickly discover that Tastespotting takes your addiction to a whole new level. First gear, it's alright; second gear, hold on tight!
It's pretty, it's fun, and it's as hard a habit to kick as crack.
So go; play, frolic, enjoy! Just don't say I didn't warn you.
Sometimes I drive up in the middle of the week to eat lunch (sans wine) at one of the outside tables and soak in the sunshine.
Then there are the gardens themselves. Like walking through a living museum, the Cornerstone Gardens are a collection of "installations" by landscape designers and garden artists from all over the world. Some of the installations are modern and fun, like the blue bubble tree and the twirly-whirly field of pinwheels by Ken Smith, while others are startling in their stark beauty, like the "white room" of birch trees by Topher Delaney. They're the best kind of art ~ thought-provoking, informative and bewitching, floating against a canvas of blue sky and puffy white clouds.
