Two weeks ago, environmental activist, author and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, came to the Portland US District courthouse to join a midday demonstration “marking the two-year anniversary of the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling that gave corporations unprecedented power to fund political campaigns,” according to a story in the Portland Phoenix. “City councilor Dave Marshall recently submitted a resolution that calls on Maine’s congressional delegation to support a constitutional amendment abolishing the so-called ‘corporate personhood’ codified by the ruling. ‘We simply can’t win the battle against carbon if politics remains polluted by corporate money,’ McKibben says.” Dave Marshall’s resolution was indeed passed that Thursday night. The city council of Portland voted 6-2 to call on the state’s congressional delegation to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing “corporate personhood.” [Here's a good roundup of the issue from CommonDreams.org]

McKibben went on to give a lecture that Friday evening at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center hosted by the University of New England entitled, “Local and Global: Notes from the Frontlines of the Climate Fight.” [Here's the video of the talk.] That talk is being broadcast today on MPBN’s Speaking in Maine public affairs program.

Now Portland likes corporations just fine, but we like living and working to be in balance. We like our people to be people and our corporations to be corporations.

In fact, a lot of the companies that are attracted to Maine, and to the Portland area in particular, are trying to create solutions to the kinds of problems McKibben addresses in his most recent book, Eaarth, Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.  ReVision Energy, Ocean Approved Kelp, Ocean Renewable Power, all presented at this year’s Juice 3.0 conference and are all based in Portland. Other Portland green businesses listed on the Maine Businesses for Sustainability include Blue Reserve Water, PDT Architects, Wright-Ryan Construction, and Coffee by Design. A great resource for local services with green practices is the new green business directory from The Sunrise Guide.

McKibben’s talk was Skyped live around the State to Belfast, Bangor, Houlton, and the Portland Public Library. Bill said he has been to all of these places, but this “is a very low carbon way to get around Maine!” He apologized, in advance for being, “a professional bummer-outer of people,” but then went on to tell what we can all do to make things better. He praised Maine’s initiatives in the local food movement and Portland’s permaculture efforts during the 10.10.10 day of action, but he also said we need to do more.

In particular, McKibben thinks that the injection of money into politics is crippling our government’s ability to make any substantive changes in our energy future. ”I gave a little talk at the Portland courthouse today,” he said, “because there was a demonstration to mark the second anniversary of the Citizens United thing that sort of opened up fully the money spigots for corporate America to interfere in our political life. And this is just cheating. If the Patriots make the Super Bowl, and Bob Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, is caught giving money to the referees beforehand, it’s a national scandal. Everybody would be outraged, but if Exxon does it, then it’s OK. That’s crazy and we’ve got to stop it, right now.”

McKibben speaks from the deep Yankee tradition (see my discussion with Colin Woodard in relation to this). In fact, in 2010 he wrote a series of articles for Yankee Magazine subtitled How New England Can Save the World. And he was clearly speaking to a receptive audience that night in Westbrook, “The thing that keeps us from fixing things is our cynicism. This is how it’s always going to be. We need to be aggressively naive about this. I think we need to say, ‘This is not right, it’s not fair, it makes no sense. We don’t know how it got started, but it’s time to stop it.’ And we won’t stop it perfectly and all at once, but hopefully we can at least throw a scare into them. So we’re going to have people all over the country and they’re going to be following around their congressman with big signs pointing out how much money they’ve taken. And we’re going to be making up suit coats for them that look like those uniforms that nascar drivers wear, with decals, logos, for each of their companies. It’s shameful what’s going on and there needs to be some shaming done.”

Bill is not a naturally outgoing person and he has taken the mantle of activist leader somewhat reluctantly. In many ways, like many creatives, he would rather sit in his room and write. But there’s clearly something about the momentum of social engagement, and 350.orgs surprising victories, that keeps him going. Returning at the end of his talk to the theme of local foods he concluded, ”The secret is to have more fun than other people have, and part of that involves eating delicious, good things close to home, and frankly i think we’ve reached the point that i’m going to stop so I can eat some of them!”

“What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library?”

— Italo Calvino, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler

In the center of downtown Portland lies Monument Square, a memorial to the city’s Civil War veterans and a prominent public space where the city’s Arts District, business district, and the Old Port converge.

And occupying pride of place in the city’s most prominent square is the newly-renovated main branch of the Portland Public Library.

I’ve always believed that a city’s civic strength, egalitarianism, and confidence as a community are reflected in the quality of its libraries. Naturally, we have a great library here in Portland: the building’s geographic prominence reflects its importance as a cultural and educational resource for the entire southern Maine region.

Some of the things you’ll find there:

• The excellently curated Lewis Gallery — this month’s program includes a photography show sponsored by the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.
• Lunch-hour readings from local authors and evening film screenings in the Rines Auditorium.
• The Portland Room, home to the library’s special collections, including rare books, an archive of Maine’s newspapers and magazines, old maps, photographs, and other ephemera. The Portland Room also hosts an impressive collection from the famous Anthoensen Press and Thomas B. Mosher Press, which together established our city as an important center for printing and publishing in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
• An excellent children’s library, with daily programs and readings for young children, and the new Teen Library, which lends video games, hosts study sessions and game nights, and sports a generous collection of graphic novels and YA literature.
• And last but not least, a sun-filled reading room in the front of the building facing Congress Street and Monument Square — a great place to meet people, take advantage of the free wi-fi, read the local papers, or just watch the city pass by.

The Portland Public Library is currently soliciting donations for its annual fund, which purchases new materials above and beyond what would be possible with taxpayer contributions. Visit their secure webpages to give.

Photo courtesy of the Portland Public Library

How many times do we actually ask you to do anything on this blog? Our tone is usually more of an invitation to enjoy the pleasures of Portland or a suggestion of someone you might be interested in meeting. We’re not really about action items—but here’s one!

At this month’s Portland Greendrinks event, on the second Tuesday (January 10) at The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies (561 Congress Street) Sean Sullivan from Bowdoin College will be filming for a video about career opportunities in Maine. He will be asking people their name, what they do in Portland and why they love living and working in Portland (and Maine). The footage will be used first for a video “to entice Bowdoin, Bates and Colby students to attend the Maine Based Employers Career Fair (prevent the brain drain!), which Bowdoin is putting on to feature opportunities available in Maine.” But since this also fits in rather neatly with the mission of Creative Portland, we will probably find uses for the footage of Portland-loving people too.

For extra incentives (and to highlight sustainable transportation in Portland), Sean has procured 3 free bike tune ups from Allspeed Cycles (that will be distributed at random to participants) and a discount code (for all participants) that waives the membership fee and gives $10 worth of free time from UCarShare ($35 value).

And for all you architects and interior designers out there, the event is co-sponsored by SMRT, the 125 year old Portland based architectural project management company.

So please, help Maine, help Portland and come to Greendrinks with a face and a soundbite to let the world know why you love Portland!

Part of what makes Portland’s First Friday Art Walks so much fun is that they have no epicenter. As the crowd surges along Congress Street, with smaller group investigating eddies in the Old Port, the Place To Be shifts from one locale to the next. One sure thing: if you stroll enough, and walk through enough doors, wonderful things will happen.

Last night, the December Art Walk that leads up to the holidays, there was an extra energy in the air. You could sense it at Congress Square: on one side, the line snaked into the State Theater for The Fogcutters present Big Band Syndrome (Lauren Wayne posted a video of the finale of the show); the other side of the square featured the Portland Museum of Art (free on Friday nights) and their hypnotic show on classic Shaker artifacts. Meanwhile, in-between, Art Walkers trundled up the stairs of the Flat Iron Gallery, in the pie-slice-shaped Hay Building, to sip and chew and ruminate on Art, Life, and Living in Portland.

Another wonderful thing, as always, took place at Otto Pizza, a few steps down Congress Street. Your correspondent was among the many who stood happily on the sidewalk, waiting in line to purchase a slice of what many consider to be the finest pizza north of Boston (and now Otto is in Harvard Square, too!). When it comes in as ideal and manifold a presentation as Otto offers, pizza can crystallize the creative economy.

Outside Otto, the sidewalk mambo was wending its way down Congress Street to Space Gallery, with many a stop along the way. Inside Space, one of First Friday’s mainstays, there was music, there was art, there was laughter, there was drinking, there were jostling crowds and a buoyant sense of pleasure in the air. There was also an Alternative Gift Market where you could buy donations to a wide range of curated non-profits and deliver them in a selection of limited edition, hand printed cards designed by artists Beth Taylor, Erin Flett and Jacqueline Dubois.

If you prefer your art au plein air, you could step outside of Space onto the sidewalk, where an open-air truck had pulled up to the curb. Just climb the ramp into the truck’s back to observe the paintings hanging within.

The crowd kept surging, now on to the Maine College of Art. Every year, MECA combines their First Friday participation with a huge holiday sale of items by college students and alums. This year, three floors were given over to a cavalcade of holidazzles, and so the crowds were especially strong here. Among the (hundreds of?) tables and booths, there seemed to be a particular emphasis on recycled treasures: playing cards converted into wallets, umbrellas converted into aprons, stamps converted into earrings.

For those who needed to retreat from the gleeful cacophony of MECA, there was quieter contemplation at galleries where one could, for instance, admire scale models, photos, and blueprints celebrating the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Or, upstairs at Cross Jewelers, you could sample “tastings” of various hot cocoas. Then back out into the street and more galleries, more stores, more music.

Until, in the words of Samuel Pepys, one has turned First Friday into First Saturday, “and so to bed.”

Photos by John Spritz

Out of a field of 15 candidates, the people of Portland have chosen their next mayor—former State Senate majority leader Michael Brennan. For the last 88 years, the Portland City Council has appointed the mayors, so this is kind of a big deal.

An even bigger deal is that Portland has elected a leader who articulates positions critical to the growth of the creative economy:

Brennan has committed to “work for a Portland that embraces diversity, acts with compassion, encourages artists as well as business leaders, promotes energy conservation, preserves open spaces, expands buy local and grow local initiatives, builds affordable housing, and offers accessible healthcare.”

He believes in the development of the downtown and the working waterfront: “ I am committed to expanding affordable housing opportunities in the downtown and providing incentives for businesses who locate there.  Our working waterfront is part of the city’s history and tradition that must not be lost.  It should be a significant component of any economic development strategy.”

Quality of life is high on his list of priorities: “We live here because there is no other city in the country that combines natural beauty with such a robust array of arts and culture, population diversity, and progressive social policies.  I want to make every night a “First Night” in Portland and provide our artists and musicians with on-going venues to perform and display their talents.”

Brennan is a locavore: “‘Buy Local’ efforts help support a variety of community businesses and allow us to be less dependent on out of state sources for our food.  Buy local should also include growing local.”

He sees the relationship between education and economic growth: “As a longtime education policy leader, I will work tirelessly to establish a world-class education system from early childhood through higher education and senior college.”

Finally, he knows what it means to represent Portland to the state and negotiate our fair share of the funding: “I will use my years of experience as a State Representative and State Senator to make certain Portland is treated fairly and that Portland and the region are recognized as the economic engines that drive the state’s economy.”

Good luck, Mr. Mayor! You are now another engine driving the growth of Portland.

In a world of uncertainty, why celebrate risk? Why put everything you have into a crazy idea with only the barest beginnings of a plan? Ask that to Corey, Tyler and Seth, above, when they leave Love, The Bus in LA and fly back to Camden to be among the keynote speakers at the Juice 3.0 Conference in Camden on November 4 and 5th. In the case of Tyler Dunham, Seth Brown, and Corey McLean, these three “lifelong friends, filmmakers, and adventurers from the coastal town of Lincolnville, Maine (pop. 2,042). …[are] brimming with optimistic energy and a desire to accomplish something epic.” So they converted an old schoolbus into a grease-powered, web video road trip mobile and have been travelling around the country raising money to fund projects for community organizations and uploading the results in real time. If they can do all that, what else can they do?

And that’s just the point. The creative economy, the innovation economy, the experience economy—these are all expressions of the fluidity required by this crazy world—call it the improvisation economy. The Juice Conference is dedicated to bringing together a wide range of creative, innovative thinkers who have figured out how to put their ideas into action. Speakers and panelists include Maine heavyweights like Governor Angus King, Eliot Cutler and Roxanne Quimby, art world luminaries like Louisa McCall, Donna McNeil, and Eric Fischl and technological innovators like Kerem Durdag, John Ferland and  Steve Page. Portland’s creative economy is well represented by Ben Sawyer, of Digital Mill, Josh Broder of Tilson Technologies, Paul Dobbins, of Ocean Approved, Stephanie Volo of Planet Dog and Jaime Parker of Portland Trails.

One of the highlights of the conference is the pitch contest with $150,000 in financing to the winning business plans. (The deadline has been extended to Friday, October 28, so there’s still time to apply). If you’re not up for facing the “shark tank” in the pitch contest, they also have a short film contest (the deadline to apply is also now this friday.) Putting business plans and people who think about making business plans in front of investors and experts about those businesses is exactly what Juice is trying to do. And if your plan sounds like a mystery bus ride, what start up these days doesn’t?

Maine is full of smart people doing interesting things, but we may all be a bit too independently minded for our own good. That’s why conferences like Juice (and TEDx Dirigo) and places like Portland are so important. As the innovation economy spreads out through Maine, Portland has a role to play as a place to bring people together, to develop stories, to share a great meals, to cross-pollenate and propagate. Josh Broder of Portland’s Tilson Technology was just named to MaineBiz’s Next List for 2011. In the article he predicts that certain parts of the economy are poised for significant growth, “especially in those industries with strong ties to the creative economy. ‘American centers of innovation are our capital—the companies coming from technology, software and social media,’ he says. ‘All of those new things require significant infrastructure, and we’re the infrastructure provider.’”

And the same could be said of Portland. If risk is the juice of the Maine’s creative economy, Portland is it’s glass.

Photo from Love, The Bus

In an increasingly global job market, students must be fluent in science, technology, engineering, and math to remain competitive. This set of topics, often referred to as STEM education, has been at the forefront of school districts’ agendas in Maine. These programs seek interconnections amongst STEM subjects, and use real-world scenarios to teach students critical thinking and problem solving techniques. High schoolers in the Portland area with a strong interest in growing their STEM knowledge will soon have another choice for their alma maters.

The Baxter Academy, a Maine charter school, will open its doors to teens across the state next September. The school is the first of its kind in Southern Maine; the Maine School of Science and Mathematics serves a similar purpose in Aroostook County. Now, students in the Portland area will have opportunities to explore interests in biology, architecture, computer programming, and more while living at home.

“The Baxter Academy gives students more options,” explained John Jacques, Baxter Academy’s Executive Director. “We want to help people find a better fit for their kids. Our mission is to serve a group of students with a more specific set of interests.” To help cultivate STEM skills, Baxter Academy will offer more hands-on, expeditionary style learning. For instance, a biology course might venture on the Casco Bay Line to explore the islands. The school also plans on including an internship component that partners students with local businesses and research centers, like the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

The Baxter Academy will strengthen Maine’s already-strong record in STEM education. The STEM Education Coalition, which gives states rankings based on their public school performance, ranked Maine sixth in the nation for the percentage of high schoolers ready for college based on both their ACT math and science scores. Additionally, Maine is the state with the best pupil to teacher ratio in the country (11.9 students per teacher, versus a national average of 15.47).

When it opens in September 2012, Baxter Academy will accept 80 students for both its freshman and sophomore class. Students will be chosen through a lottery system if more apply than the school can accept. The application process will get underway late this fall, after the Department of Education finalizes the school’s charter. Interested parents and students are encouraged to check the school’s website for updates regarding applications and the ultimate location of the school.

For the intrepid Portlander (including your devoted editor) next Saturday promises to be even more immersive than usual. From 9 to 5 I will punch in at the Portland Stage Company on Forest Ave. and have my head filled with “Maine Ideas Worth Spreading” at the second annual TEDxDirigo conference. Then, at quittin’ time, the more than 200 conference attendees and speakers will pour out onto the street and find themselves just half a block from the second coming of the creative Portland carnivale that is SPACE Gallery’s Block Party. For the next three hours, the Portland Arts District will be filled with creative manifestations of all kinds. Think FirstFRIDAYxSteroidos!

And interesting for us that this is the second year that LiveWork Portland has been around to cover these events. TEDx Dirigo wasn’t on our map (literally) last year because it happened in Brunswick, at the Frontier Café near Bowdoin College. This year they hope to triple the attendance by hosting it in Portland. We were particularly enamored by the steamroller stunt at last year’s block party, and while no steamrollers are on the menu for this year’s event, there is a much longer list of individual artists and groups staging installations and performances than last year. And although they only come from Providence instead of Brazil, this year’s party band, the What Cheer? Brigade, is a 19 piece sometimes marching brass band that “mixes the sounds of Bollywood, The Balkans, New Orleans, Samba and Hip-Hop, with the intensity of a punk rock band.” Wow!

When I think about it I imagine a day of extreme cultural and intellectual density. The kind of experience you expect to find only in big cities. But these things are possible in Portland because of an unusual balance of factors—call it “small density”—that puts lots of smart people in proximity to each other without crushing overhead or soul-destroying commutes. And all that extra time and energy fuels a community of non-profits robust enough to stage ambitious events like these—sometimes two or more in a day. Portland is itself a “Maine idea worth spreading.” Pass it on!

Lately I’ve noticed innovators across many fields working in the art of circumstance. These are people working with situations as the medium. They write scripts of chance. They orchestrate the action so that one audience member’s potential interaction with another becomes an underlying creative force. Theatergoers become actors. Tourists become attractions. And in the case of an upcoming conference in Portland, Maine, audience members can have the impact of keynote speakers.

TEDxDirigo, inaugurated last year at the Frontier Cafe in Brunswick, is a day devoted to Maine “ideas worth spreading.” This year’s conference, on Saturday, September 10, will take over the more spacious Portland Stage Company. The participants’ exchanges are as central to the day’s success as their attendance at a series of stimulating talks. This is not a conference on a single issue—the goal is to generate interdisciplinary connective tissue. TEDxDirigo gathers over a dozen members of the Maine community with wildly diverse achievements (from beekeepers to musicians, nurses to thinkers on sustainable development). All are asked to give “the talk of their life,” said Jen Boggs, a TEDxDirigo representative. In the words of Executive Director Adam Burk, the speakers give “high impact TED talks that evoke contagious emotion,” following the format of the nationally renowned TED conferences. No two speakers from even remotely similar field will speak back to back. The ordering of talks is designed to generate maximum friction for the audience’s inspired conversations, and Boggs compares structuring the day’s schedule to putting together “a big puzzle.”

The even bigger puzzle, is the audience. The secret ingredient to TEDxDirigo’s art of circumstance begins with the selective application process to attend. Burk relished in this notion of a curated audience, saying “We put a lot of care into building a diverse program for a diverse audience, because you never know who is going to connect with what idea or what person. This is part of the magic, the synchronicity of life. There are other events that focus on single issues or fields. If someone is worried about the depth and breadth of our event, then perhaps it’s not for them.”

Then who, specifically, is this event geared toward? Burk said, “people with a track record of engaging in the power of ideas, such as product developers, social innovators, philanthropists, researchers, entrepreneurs, performance artists, musicians, visual artists, etc.” Selecting a crowd of our community’s most proactive thinkers ensures that the ample breaktime provided in the wake of each talk (as well as top-quality Maine cuisine) will spur attendees to self-organize and move projects forward through collaboration.

Speakers include: singer/songwriter Emilia Dahlin; Executive Director of the Center for Preventing Hate and civil rights activist Steve Wessler; and founder and director of Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI), Roger Doiron. Videos of all of last year’s talks are listed on the speakers page as well. If you are interested in being an audience member (just like the main TED conference, only much, much less expensive) you can apply to attend here. It won’t be the same without you.

Of all the world-class creative directors alighting on Portland, Maine this Friday for the Abstract: The Future of Design in Media Conference, Gael Towey is perhaps in the best position to “get” Portland. Towey has been the Creative Director for Martha Stewart’s magazines and other omnimedias for the past 20 years. Together, Martha and Gael have made the well-crafted and well-curated life knowable and accessible to a generation of Americans that was losing touch with the basic competencies of their own lifestyles. From heirloom apples to the perfect turkey, Martha Stewart Living has shown and told us what to buy—and more importantly—what to do with what we buy.

So it was serendipity last week, as I was considering how to introduce Gael Towey to Portland, that designer Brook Delorme, of Brook There on Wharf Street, posted a piece on her blog entitled “Artisanal Living.” If Martha Stewart turned the artistry of everyday life into an aspirational pastime, many of us in Portland have turned it into a full-time occupation. Brook begins, ”I understand, in theory, the way to really make money … invent something and then remove your personal body, self and time from the process of building and distribution.” But that, of course, is not what Brook is doing in her design business at all, she’s making things, herself, by hand. “The artisanal approach is limited—by working hours in the day,” she continues. “Artisanal manufacturing; whether it’s bread or pottery or handmade clothing— isn’t very scalable.”

And there you have it, Martha Stewart in New York creating content (at scale) about the joys of doing things by hand and recognizing things well done, and Portland artisans filling the hours of their days practicing, in a sense, what Martha is preaching. There is a bit of a fret underlying all of the emphasis on craft in Portland—are we too artisanal for our own good? But in Portland, which was Brooklyn before Brooklyn was Brooklyn, it is not just the art of the hand-made garment or the perfect baguette that consumes us, but also the art of the community. When Brook muses, ”So, were I to desire to grow this business, I’d need to find someone else to at least do some of the stuff I like doing, and I’d have to spend more time doing things I dislike,” we can echo as well that people live in Portland so they can spend more of their time doing the things they like and less time doing things they dislike. Finally, Brook asks, “Can I reframe this somehow? what am I missing?”

This is the question that Portland is asking and to a certain extent, what the Abstract Conference is answering. The conference grows out of the incredibly dense media community in New York that has spent the last few years battling its own extinction from the pressures of what in the ’90s was quaintly called “new media.” But the strength of the community was such that, with the help of technology, they have led the “old media” print publishing companies into the new world of branded apps, social media and mobile content. These creative directors have all “reframed” their skills and talents in the context of multi-platform publishing. So the promise of the conference to participants is a concentrated glimpse of the way forward for designers and publishers, but in a more concrete sense it is about how a critical mass of talent in one place leads to innovation and the growth of new businesses.

Portland aspires to be such a community of creative innovators, and I think many of us have a sense that we are approaching a tipping point beyond which we will spontaneously begin to emit new products and businesses like strange quarks in a particle accelerator. That is the spirit behind LiveWork Portland and our new networking group 2 Degrees Portland. As Brook Delorme wrote in a post we commented on last year, we think more competition from more creatives will be better for everyone’s business. So we’re trying to connect the dots for people interested in relocating here by hooking them up with volunteers here who can help them find their place in Portland.

I asked all of the Abstract panelists “To the extent that technology allows you to move your life and work to another city, which ones would you consider? And if you didn’t answer Portland, Maine, what factors (other than moving it to Brooklyn!) would make you consider relocating here?” Not surprisingly, Gael replied, “I can’t move to Portland because my husband and kids are in NYC, and I love it too much. However, I am excited to visit Portland. I think technology allows us to travel more and live in other cities besides NY.” So we know that she is not coming to Portland on Friday to scout the location, BUT IF she were, this is the kind of thing that 2 Degrees Portland would do for her:

[If the English language had a subjunctive tense with a connotation that means AS IF, we would switch to that at this point in the post!]

2 Degrees Portland coordinator Laura Burden would receive an email from Gael through the 2 Degrees website or Facebook page. Since she would have just read the “Artisanal Living” post, Brook would immediately spring to mind as a good “connector” for Gael. [To become a connector for 2 Degrees Portland, just fill out this short form.] Laura would email Brook and ask her if she would be willing to talk to Gael on the phone or meet with her on her next trip to Portland. Brook would say, ”Sounds like fun! and thank you for thinking of me ” Perhaps Brook would invite Gael to her workshop on Wharf Street and tell her about starting a lifestyle brand in Portland. Then maybe they would walk over to Custom House Wharf for a hands-on stitching demonstration at Sea Bags and then to 2 Note Perfumery on Moulton Street to pick out a gift for Martha. in parting, Brook would wish her luck, ask her to keep in touch and pass on a list of places she thinks Gael would enjoy:

a short list in portland!

my favorites:
fore street <—favorite nice restaurant because it’s relaxed
boda <—-only thai food in portland that’s actually like food in thailand
rosemont market <—they make the best hummous in portland, & competitively price their excellent quality produce
micucci’s <—-luna bread-  the best bread in portland
arabica, bard, hilltop  <—I can’t take sides, I love them all, but almost every day I get a latte from arabica.
quimby colony <—Roxanne Quimby’s exciting and emerging artist colony, with a focus on design
bar lola <—Our artisanal version of “Everyday Food”

granted, most of my list is food-related…but that’s what portland’s about, right?

Switching out of the subjunctive, Gael, even if you’re not going to HQ your own multimedia empire here, we hope you enjoy Portland. If you have the time, Brook would be happy to meet you, Sea Bags really would make a photogenic how-to story for the iPad, 2 Note is great for gifts and the food really is as good as everyone says.