Portland hardly runs the risk of cinematic overexposure, but when we see real a Portland movie, one with a sense of place, we remember it. These run the gamut from the 1950s noir morality play Portland Exposé and nuclear-strike preparedness special A Day Called X to Penny Allen’s 1978 land-use satire Property to the work […]
The Notebook on Cities and Culture Guide to the Pacific Northwest indexes all the show’s Pacific Northwest city-recorded and Pacific Northwest city-related interviews. But 52 more Seattle interviews could appear over the next year if we successfully Kickstart season six, A Year in Seattle, before Saturday morning. Check out its Kickstarter page to find out how you can help […]
Whenever I go to Portland, Oregon – my favourite city in America – I immediately catch the train downtown and make straight for the food carts on 10th Avenue and Alder Street. This spectacular collection of micro-eateries never disappoints. I was there recently, making circuit after mouthwatering circuit of this cart-lined block, trying to decide […]
One night only, Portlanders! Tonight at 7:00 at the Hollywood Theatre, I’ll give my talk and screening “Portland and Los Angeles: The Cities in Cinema“, a look at how movies — respectable ones and schlockfests, Hollywood blockbusters and indie favorites, visions of the future and the past — reveal both the City of Angels and […]
This Sunday, January 25, at 7:00 p.m., my live talk and screening happens at Portland, Oregon’s Hollywood Theatre. I’ll show both never-before-seen video essays from “Los Angeles, the City in Cinema” and present to you the world premiere of “Portland, the City in Cinema”, a new, long-form video essay on the roles the City of […]
On Sunday, January 25, 2015, I’ll appear live at Portland, Oregon’s Hollywood Theatre to give “Portland and Los Angeles: The Cities in Cinema”, a talk on and a screening of my City in Cinema video essays. The evening will include not just new, never-before-seen video essays on Los Angeles films, but the world premiere of Portland: […]
“The blocks are unusually short in Portland, making for pleasant serendipity,” writes Jan Morris. “The architecture is mostly genial, there are plenty of coffee-shops, not all of them insisting that you drink their cappuccino out of plastic cups, and the gloriously rambling Powell’s City of Books must be one of the best bookshops on […]
With a “greater” area of nearly 500 square miles and blocks that can feel 500 yards long, Los Angeles has instilled in me a certain sense of distances. Rarely in that city do I need to ride my bike anywhere farther than twelve miles away, but on its roads that can take an hour. Portland, […]
“You from one of those… Ivy league places?” A Scatman Crothers-ish TSA agent asked me this, half-accusingly, as I passed through his station, thus continuing the long tradition of my being attributed to regions I’ve never even visited. Not really, I haltingly responded, and the man softened. “Hey, that’s alright,” he said. Ain’t nothing wrong […]
“Black Tiger milkshakes!” This my girlfriend exclaimed after I brought up my imminent trip to Portland. “It would probably be an exaggeration to say that a Black Tiger shake is made with vanilla ice cream, eight shots of espresso, and two pounds of ground coffee beans,” food writer Matthew Amster-Burton says about the drink about […]