My Tale of Three Great Cities

Melissa Jun Rowley posted a marvelous piece here on Posterous: The Tale of Three Great Cities. I’m guessing all of us have a similar tale; here’s mine.

Las Vegas, Nevada

“What happens here, stays here.” Fortunately, I left before that immortal marketing campaign. I was back for a one-day visit in December of 2008, and it was like being transported to another planet. The Strip now looks like a mashup of Times Square, Disneyland and miniature versions of every famous city in the world. Where was my beloved desert? Did I really go to graduate school here? In Mathematics? That’s what the diploma says.

I hear they’re bringing back that marketing campaign. Las Vegas to revive ‘What happens here’ advertising slogan. I’ll pass.

Baltimore – Washington – Annapolis

Three airports, a seaport, two major symphony orchestras, a haven for sailors, spices, seafood, working rail travel and public transit, a restaurant for every nation in the world but one, and one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. I wasn’t born there, but I was conceived there. It’s really a great place to live – is it any wonder the Obama family chose it as their home? It’s a great place to live, but what about to visit?

It’s been a tad over ten years since the last time I visited, and I don’t really have a reason to go back. The jazz club in Annapolis where I heard Ethel Ennis and Charlie Byrd is now a Starbucks. Historic Inns of Annapolis. Well, maybe they play some jazz CDs. No thanks.

Portland, Oregon

You’ve probably figured out by now that this blog post is a thinly-veiled advertisement for my home town, designed to promote tourism. But the thing is, I don’t actually live in Portland, but in a suburb called Aloha that, strangely enough, has nothing to do with Hawaii. And I’ve never been to Hawaii, so I can’t very well ask you to visit there, can I? So, yes, definitely visit Portland!

I’ve been here for almost 25 years. What do we have?

1. Water. Two major rivers meet here, and fresh water literally falls out of the sky free for the taking! If you like it salty, there’s a few bays and coves a couple of hours to the West.
2. Air. We get our air mostly fresh off the ocean, or occasionally funneled through the Columbia Gorge by a high-pressure cell. In any event, we get it before much of the US, and we try our damnedest not to add stuff to it on its way East.
3. Mountains. Yeah, there’s one not too far away that gave us a little trouble in 1980, but for the most part, they’re pretty to look at and a great place to go skiing.
4. Parks. There are so many, I can’t list them all, so I’ll just give you a link to my favorite. Tryon Creek State Park.
5. Beer. Contrary to popular belief, you can get imported beer here. But why would you? Ours has better hops, has more alcohol, is served in pubs, restaurants, banquet halls and even movie theaters!
6. Food and wine. We grow it. We catch it in the ocean. We make it. We cook it. We eat it. We package it up and ship it. And we love to share it. Our food cart scene has been featured on national television and in the New York Times.
7. Entertainment. New York has Greenwich Village. Washington has Georgetown. Portland has Portland! Jazz, folk, rock, symphonic, chamber, ballet, opera, and two new music ensembles. Portland has numerous theater companies and a major performing arts center. We have a listener-supported classical radio station that’s heard around the world on the Internet. Oh, yeah – if you happen to hear bagpipes, they just might be coming from a unicyclist.
8. Bloggers and Tweeters and Geeks, Oh! My! I’m a blogger. This is one of my blogs. I have five others. And a LinkedIn page. And a Facebook page. And I tweet. A lot – at last count more than any other Portlander.Geeks: we have Linus Torvalds. Perhaps you’ve heard of Linux? He invented it. We have major contributors to Perl, PostgreSQL, Ruby, WordPress and other open source projects. We have Jive Software and Zapproved. We have the Silicon Florist. We have 30 Hour Day. We have Strange Love Live. We love social media, software and (wait for it) social media software! Software is a craft here, just like belts, jewelry and beer. You can actually sit and watch us make it in coffee shops and pubs.

So if you’re looking for a great city to visit this year, we’re here! Just be careful crossing the street if you hear bagpipes.