Portland: an industrial adventure

We spent the better part of yesterday driving next to and underneath Portland's many bridges in search of retail supplies for our store. This is on Second and Main in front of Portland Store Fixtures, a warehouse full of half functional used retail fixtures. It was kind of cool but mostly creepy. Dark isles crammed fourteen feet high with unidentifiable dusty goods. One isle was completely dedicated to casters. Yup, lots of old rusty wheels for chairs, rolling desks, gurneys perhaps. I did find some fabulous fake vegetables though to use in displays. A lot of people don't know that I used to have an impressive fake fruit collection which was melted in the twelve hundred degree heat of the fire we had in our attic a few years ago. I have a soft spot for fake produce.

This is the City Liquidators building. It's huge. There's another just like it across the street. This place is a bargain hunter's paradise! For the mentally ill, however, being in a building crammed floor to ceiling with all the crappy shit people didn't want to buy a year ago can create a short in the brain. It's overwhelming. It's like the way Walmart is in my nightmares where a million poorly designed cheap things people can fill their houses with comes to life and crowds me until I suffocate and die. Yes, it's true, you can die in your own dreams. (People used to always tell me you can't die in your own dreams.)

Ever wonder where all those metal desks used by our country's government paper-pushers went once we became the press-board nation? I found them all. One of the City Liquidators buildings is like a metal desk graveyard. It was eerie and kind of cool. I actually coveted a couple of the desks with official labels all over it. We also could have come home with a couple of gurnies, one of those things you hang your IV on when you want to walk around the hospital with all your fluids rolling beside you, and doctor scales. We didn't find anything for the store but it was a pretty cool adventure.

We got really hungry, the way you do when you're looking at a lot of decommissioned furniture, and a woman suggested this restaurant called Montage. It's right there, kitty corner to the City Liquidators building. It calls itself a Bistro and serves mostly mac and cheese. The woman who recommended it claims that they have the best mac and cheese in the world. I happen to be an expert on mac and cheese. I have to say that what they serve isn't really mac and cheese in my opinion. The sauce wasn't thick enough to qualify (fairly runny actually) and it most certainly wasn't baked.

However, having said that, if you just call it pasta, it was exquisite. We also had a fried pear salad that came with smoked cheddar slices, croutons, some thinly sliced red potatoes, and a cilantro dressing. The food was excellent and not too expensive. One of the most charming things about the place was the waiter who was friendly but so far from obsequious that at one point he just sat down next to us as we ordered. Every single piece of paper he put on our table was crumpled. This is the kind of thing that makes me feel right at home. I like people like that. I like places like that. I'm a bit prickly about dining out. I get easily intimidated by restaurants that are super hip, bustling, expensive, and posh. It's possible that I never got over the time my Dad took me to Vanessi's in San Francisco and I managed to dislodge my entire salad onto the table with one pass of my knife. It's all a little hazy now to protect my feelings. I do remember the look of disdain the waiter gave me as he watched my barbaric exhibition.

This restaurant is housed in what obviously used to be a corner liquor store or dive bar. It looks completely closed and dark from the outside. We almost didn't go in because it looked so dark in the windows through the inch of old grime. I'm so glad we did go in. It was such a nice day in the industrial parts of the city. We didn't get my Vespa headlights though which is such a pain in the ass. So in a little while I'm going to ride my bike in the rain to return DVD's to the video store and get new ones to sew to. I have to watch movies while I sew. I'm watching lots of classics starring Doris Day, Ingrid Bergman, and Cary Grant. I better get going. I have so much to do and panic is close on my heels. I'm going to try to out-run it. This never actually works, but there's no harm in trying.