BudgetTravel

When I first heard Loretta Lynn sing, "Well, Portland, Oregon, and sloe gin fizz / If that ain't love, then tell me what is," I wanted to write her a letter. "Dear Loretta," it would say. "Have you ever considered Havana, Cuba, and a bottle of rum? How about Madrid, Spain, and a lusty Rioja?" As far as I could tell, there was nothing particularly seductive about a city where plug-ins for electric cars were installed nine years ago, where the most prominent new building was made with recycled material, where you'd be hard pressed to find a street without a clearly marked bike lane.

There's an admirable, almost intimidating conscientiousness to the way people in Portland live, which has little to do with sensual abandon. Not only does a spotless, fast, and cheap ($1.70) light rail run from the airport to the middle of the city, but there was also a guardian angel posted near the ticket machine to facilitate the process. Forty minutes later, I was on the tree-lined, cobblestoned streets downtown. A policeman on a mountain bike directed me to the Hotel Lucia, where the staff offered me a tart green apple and plied me with maps and restaurant recommendations. Wandering around, I noticed kiosks stocked with brochures. They were manned by sidewalk ambassadors, armed with pocket PCs, posted specifically to answer tourists' questions. It was like Disneyland with more overt politics.

Washington Park (John Clark)

But every time I thought I had Portland figured out, something came along and turned my theory upside-down. It can be as arch as it is earnest, as sophisticated as it is folksy, as obsessive as it is easygoing--and although it may lead with its utopian aspirations, it has plenty of dystopian secrets. Portland, I was surprised to learn, has more strip bars per capita than any other U.S. city.

Maybe Loretta was on to something.

It started, as these things do, with smart planning. Twenty-five years ago, the regional government created an urban growth boundary, confining new development to established neighborhoods in order to minimize sprawl. The result is a city unfettered by strip malls and prefab developments; instead, Portland is a patchwork of neighborhoods, each a sort of self-contained, distinctive ecosystem.

The Willamette (rhymes with "Damn it") River snakes through the city, separating the east side from the west; Burnside Street divides north and south. Most of Portland's traditional attractions are on the west side, including its downtown. At lunch hour, Pioneer Square--an amphitheater smack in the city's center--is filled with professionals eating delicious tacos and Ethiopian food sold from hand-painted carts. But unlike so many American cities, downtown Portland continues to live and breathe at night and on weekends. Every other evening in Pioneer Square, weather permitting, there's a symphony or a youth choir or an Italian cultural festival--or at the very least, a street musician banging noisily on plastic buckets.

Most of downtown Portland is shiny and new, but there are vestiges of the 19th century, when it was a brawny logging town. In the lobby of the Governor Hotel, leather couches and armchairs cluster around a huge marble fireplace. The hotel restaurant, Jake's Grill, is a classic steakhouse: mosaic floors, stiff martinis, and Frank Sinatra on the sound system. Wilf's, in the city's fin de siècle train station, transports guests to an even earlier era, a time when train stations were associated with passionate farewell kisses. It's a piano bar with flocked wallpaper, chandeliers, and huge velvet banquettes. The night I was there, a woman in cat glasses, accompanied by a pianist and a conga player, crooned torch songs and bossa nova for an eclectic crowd--commuters killing time, couples in their 60s, hipsters titillated by living an anachronism (many of whom she greeted by name).

A good number of cast-iron buildings in downtown's Old Town still bear their old signs, mostly for theaters and western outfitters, but inside are some of the city's most interesting shops. Portland may have more vintage clothing stores per capita than any other American city--and one of the best, if the most expensive, is Torso. Michellie, the imperious chatelaine who runs the place, talks as if each piece is a beloved child. "Those darlings won't be with us for long," she purrs, waving a bangled arm toward a row of Dior and Valentino gowns. Around the corner at The Monkey and the Rat, there are antique walking sticks, Indonesian marionettes, gleaming mango-wood vases, and intricately carved Thai spirit houses. In one more instance of Portland's good intentions, the owner tells me that he prices his Asian imports as reasonably as he can, since he gets such good deals on them abroad.

On the elm-shaded streets southwest of Pioneer Square, known as the South Park Blocks, young couples, high on the joys of nesting, drift through the organic blackberries and fresh-roasted hazelnuts at the Portland Farmers Market. Families buy wholesome picnic lunches, then settle on the lawn, serenaded by a musician or four; and every week there's a cooking demonstration by chefs from some of the city's best restaurants. Portlanders take the politics of food very seriously. They want to know the provenance of their tomatoes and coffee and goat cheese. Consequently, food here tends to have a lot of modifiers. "Organic" is a given unless you're at McDonald's; "handcrafted" comes in a very close second; products are also "sustainably grown" or "fairly traded," particularly if they're from the developing world. This reigning ethos means that not only does the owner of local chain Hot Lips Pizza buy his organic vegetables from local farmers, but he can also explain in great detail about the method used to grow the wheat in his crust.

The uncompromising ethos about food production struck me as particularly Portland, as did the bearded volunteer at the entrance to the Classical Chinese Garden that afternoon. He suggested I remove my shoes upon entering--not for reasons of protocol, but because the stone paths, patterned like slashing raindrops, give a great foot massage. If I lived in Portland, I'd return again and again just to sit in the teahouse, an airy, two-story wooden pavilion with keyhole windows and latticed shutters, and a fountain trickling in the background. By now, I had come to expect esoterica from any menu, and I wasn't disappointed. It informed me that the needles for silver needle tea had to be plucked within 48 hours of sprouting; and that the leaves for jade flower tea are roasted in a wok, then sewn into a flower that resembles a sea anemone. Jade flowers are so labor-intensive, tea farmers can make only 15 of them in one day. I ordered some strange and delicious snacks, too: roasted watermelon seeds sprinkled with cinnamon and anise; turnip cakes, the consistency of polenta and served with scallions and Chinese pesto; and a boiled egg that had been steeped in soy, star anise, and smoked black tea.

Asian culture makes frequent appearances around Portland, among them a long-running exhibition of early Chinese art at the Portland Art Museum, down the street from the Farmers Market. The museum also hosts diverse traveling exhibits, from 17th-century Dutch paintings to a show of photographs and lantern slides from a 1920s expedition to Tibet. Over the past five years or so, Portland has become a breeding ground for young artistic talent, and by October, the museum will have renovated a former Masonic temple to house modern and contemporary art. Some of the most playful--and controversial--work is being done by groups such as Charm Bracelet, notorious for dissing the art world by stuffing a huge vinyl elephant with discarded artists' statements and gallery press releases. Before the 2004 presidential election, Red76 created 25,000 copies of voter information in the form of placemats, which were distributed at diners and truck stops nationwide. Ogle and Gallery 500 showcase emerging artists such as Chandra Bocci, whose recent installation (at Haze Gallery, since closed) featured plastic toy soldiers fighting with tiny pink-and-white pillows, and Matt Proctor and Eric Franklin, who constructed wooden tiki huts and igloos lit by neon tubes (after crawling through them, viewers submitted to an optical exam, and then were sent home with high-end eyeglasses).

The Pearl District is to Portland what SoHo was to New York 15 years ago, before it crossed decisively into mall territory. Formerly a neighborhood of sheet-metal warehouses and trucking distribution centers, it's where the blue-chip galleries have staked their claim. There are also high-end boutiques selling French linens, children's clothing fit for an English manor, canine tutus, and so on. The Pearl has a few relics of its former self. At Fuller's Coffee Shop, regulars in feed caps sit around the horseshoe-shaped counter slurping acidic coffee. The menu is a throwback to the days when lo-cal meant a hamburger patty and a scoop of cottage cheese. Piazza Italia remains a sweet, family-owned place that serves outstanding pasta. Overall, however, restaurants in the Pearl have higher production values than elsewhere in Portland. They're more lipsticked and perfumed, more likely to serve cocktails than beer. On weekends, Paragon feels a little like a dance club with no dance floor. The young, single crowd snacks on calamari with apricot jalapeño sauce. To appreciate the fantastic Northwest-fusion food, such as potato-wrapped wild salmon in chive coulis with marinated pear tomatoes and pea tendrils, you're better off going on a quiet weeknight.