Patisserie ^^Ar^Espness^Caf^ Desserts • Light Lunch • Soda Fountain Espresso Happy Hour: Mon-Thurs 6-8pm John Stowell, solo guitar, Wed 8-10pm 9am-midnight Sunday 11am-6pm 208 NW Couch, Old Town TWENTY-THIRD AVENUE 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 2 2 2 2 2 2 0 0 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 Gift Books Gift Certificates Calendars Holiday Wrapping Open Mon-Fri 9:30 - 7 Sat 10 to 5 Sun 11 - 4 1015 NW 23rd Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97210 (503)224-5097 12 Clinton St. Quarterly 0 2 2 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 SEATTLE AND PORTLAND By Martha Gies Ayear ago I moved from Portland to Seattle. I know maybe twenty other people who recently made the same move, and with each of them it was because they found better career opportunities in Seattle. In my case, however, the move was occasioned by the loss of a beautiful apartment, the result of the building’s sale to speculators who made slapdash “improvements,” doubled the rent, and put the house on the market again. In Portland I rarely ventured outside of a well-defined area in Northwest, bounded by Northrup and Johnson to the north and south, and by 19th and 25th Avenues to the east and west. Within this 24-block square were my own office and apartment, as well as restaurants, bars, the sellers of books and groceries with whom I traded, and the offices of many of my friends. Once a month, perhaps, I would make the trip south to the bar at Thiele’s to see what the neighborhood oldsters were up to, or east to Walter Powell’s to chart the subtle yet irrevocable transition of his empire from used to new books. In Seattle my movements are even further reduced: I work out of my apartment in Lower Queen Anne where, within eight square blocks, there are bank, post office, flower vendor, fish market, state liquor store and congenial shops where books, croissants and the New York Times are for sale. And though my minimalist habits are well-known to most of my friends, hardly a week goes by that someone does not attempt to engage me in a conversation about the differences between the two cities. After a year of devising answers to this question, I feel like something of an expert though, in truth, it is mostly armchair speculation. Like Shimashura, the hero of Kawabata’s Snow Country, an “expert” on the western ballet who had never travelled outside of Japan, never seen an actual ballet, my researches are largely fanciful. Shimashura savored his imagination about the ballet: “It was like being in love with someone he had never seen.” It is that “never seen” that I enjoy about Seattle. I am delighted by the existence of streets unwalked, people unmet, accidents and surprises yet to encountered. In Portland there is a greater social continuity: sitting at Huber’s, you meet the woman at the next table only to learn that two years ago she served on an Oregon Arts Commission jury with the woman who rented your office before you did. Strangers are not hard to meet in Portland, there are simply hard to find. And this interconnectedness can be a comfort or a cause of claustrophobia, depending on your mood. That Seattle is not thus reducible is perhaps its greatest charm. Uther impressions: With Fort Lewis nearby, and Boeing plants to the north and south, Seattle has the feel of a military-in- dustrial complex. Boeing’s fortunes play such a large part in Seattle’s economy that the recent decision to sell AWACS- radar planes to Saudi Arabia, for instance, is greeted here as good news because it will help offset the loss of commercial airplane I never understood how Portland, the third largest western shipping port, developed with its back so completely turned to the river, nor why there are only two good shoreline views of the western skyline. production and thus reduce the number of expected layoffs. Washington is less progressive than Oregon and, for me, the two most Illustration by Steve Blackburn
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