Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
glum, whose credits include Mt. Rushmore. And in case you're the
nervous type, fear not: the volcano hasn't been active for around
300,000 years, so you
should
be safe.
From the Cheese Bar, head west—downhill—along SE Belmont St.
Where the road bends at SE 55th Ave., you'll see Mt. Tabor Presbyteri-
an Church, whose hundred-year-old bell tower is now TaborSpace, a
nonprofit, pay-what-you-like coffee shop and community center. The
big Arts and Crafts-style mansion on the right as you continue down
the hill is the Blaine Smith House (5219 SE Belmont), built in 1909 and
listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Note how the houses
and yards become gradually less majestic as you make your way down
the hill.
On your left, a few blocks farther down, is one of Portland's greatest
drinking establishments, the Horse Brass Pub. Pop in for a Scotch egg
and one of the gazillion excellent beers on tap. The rough-hewn wooden
tables and smoke-patina'd walls give the place a convincing Old World
feel.
On the next block, just past the excellent Bicycle Repair Collective
(which opened in 1976 and helped launch the city's radical-cyclist com-
munity) and a brand-new, teeny-tiny hat shop, is the city's coolest video
store, Movie Madness, which doubles as a museum of film props and
costumes. (Just how wide was Orson Welles in A
Touch of Evil
? Take a
look at his jacket on display here, and you'll have a pretty good idea.
For fun, compare it to Erich von Stroheim's getup from
Sunset
Boulevard,
or an itty-bitty outfit worn by Natalie Wood.) Across the
parking lot is one of Portland's countless “pods” of food carts, where
you can get anything from gyros to waffles to beer and cap-
puccino—even, as of this writing, a Norwegian
lefse
-meatball wrap.
At SE 42nd Ave., hang a left, walk two blocks to SE Taylor St., and turn
right. Cross busy SE 39th Ave., renamed Cesar E. Chavez Blvd. in 2009
(after a surprisingly long and contentious debate), and at SE 38th Ave.
duck through a little alley to the left. Take a right at SE Main St.
At the corner of SE Main and 36th Ave. is an uncharacteristically osten-
tatious house worth a peek. A pale yellow Art Deco confection, it was
built in 1992 by Paul Wenner, the man who invented the Gardenburger.
(See
Back Story: Gardenburger
.
)