Become a Portland Companion
The Portland Companion began as a neighborhood guide for guests staying at my guesthouse in Inner Southeast Portland, The John Barleycorn Home. It evolved into a guide for the whole city, with day trips to the North Coast, Columbia Gorge and the North Willamette Valley, all within an hour or two of Portland. It also blossomed from recommendations about favorite restaurants and gathering places, essentially a local directory, into something more comprehensive and more connected.
It Takes a City & Neighborhood
One Scottish immigrant with a predilection for progressive causes and good beer can’t do it all! I would love to have Portlanders, Oregonians, Washingtonians and visitors contribute to ThePortland Companion. If you come across something or someone great in your travels, let me know. If you are an expert or are simply passionate about a particular subject that can enhance the Companion, I welcome your contribution, knowledge and thoughts. As the Companion evolves, I would love to feature, and pay, contributing editors who love and know their stuff.
If you’d like me to showcase the restaurants, bars, shops and cool stuff in your neighborhood, I’d love to hear about them and celebrate them. If there’s a topic you are passionate about, from architecture to There are already impactful “Friends” of our worthy gardens, parks and rivers, helping save and protect them from disappearing or being polluted. Why not “Companions” helping, protecting and celebrating all the great things that make a neighborhood or community work? We could do this in welcoming and inclusive gathering places – the pubs, coffee shops and churches.
I hope you can come with me to explore and celebrate the place where we live. And you will be duly acknowledged for doing so.
Cheers, Stuart. (stuart@theportlandcompanion.com)
The following essay is from The Portland Companion e-book, and explores the ideas behind the book and the concept:
In doing research for The Portland Companion, I came to realize that Portland is a town composed of vibrant, livable neighborhoods, each one with a unique personality. And the city is blessed with the proximity of fertile farmland and family farms, an ocean teeming with seafood, and rivers (the dam-free ones) flowing with trout and salmon. Farmers markets are thriving, and many Portlanders live, it seems, to explore, support and ruminate over the region’s gastronomical gifts. Maybe connecting with the farmers and people who grow our food will help heal polarization and bridge the divide between urban and rural communities. (He ruminated.)
Research on the Columbia River Gorge led me to the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America – Celilo – home to Indigenous River People for over 11,000 years. And it led down the murky and rarely discussed path of racism towards anyone in Oregon who wasn’t white. The path - Wyam, Vanport, Nihonmachi, Old Town Chinatown, Albina – has been acknowledged, somewhat, in recent years. This, and an honest dialogue about Oregon’s racist past, with action and solutions moving forward, will make us all stronger, better and happier citizens.
The Portland Companion website (Portland Companion.com) is the primary vehicle for up to date information, alongside social media. The website compliments the Companion e-book and keeps travelers updated on the frequent ebbs and flows of the hospitality industry. There will be photographs and more in-depth interviews and profiles of the people and places in the book that make our part of the world unique and special. Neighborhoods will be explored, nearby towns and farms will be celebrated, and stories will be told that connect us to community and place. And Companion contributors will be duly acknowledged!
What makes a livable community? The ability to walk or bike to a town square or main street; to hang out in the restaurants and gathering places. A park, a library, community schools. A butcher, baker and fishmonger perhaps; and a bookstore, hardware store and food co-op. A farmers market every week during the season would be wonderful, and affordable housing shouldn’t be a dream. But it won’t happen without citizens who have the gumption, wherewithal and the will to support all these community building blocks.
The Portland Companion Contributor Roll of Honor
(Alphabetical)
Elizabeth Caldwell
Minott Kerr
Bruce Prior
Isabella Ramsay
Susan Ramsay (website design)
Rita Wisher
(If you’d like to be included in the Contributor Roll of Honor, send me your local discoveries, tips, suggestions, places I should check out, etc.)
Thank you,
Stuart
Many of Portland’s best neighborhoods have some or nearly all of this, as do communities, small and large, close by: Hillsboro, Vancouver, Astoria, McMinnville, Carlton, Mosier, White Salmon, Manzanita and Hood River are some examples. The elephant in the city – not Packy – is currently downtown Portland. Any livable city needs a viable, welcoming downtown, day and night, and Portland’s center has not been holding up in recent years. We need the town square, the big shows, the fancy and not so fancy restaurants, iconic bars and restaurants, cool, eclectic shops, and urban, sophisticated art galleries and museums. The infrastructure is there, but the people still aren’t. Corporate and city workers need to return. We need to repurpose the empty office buildings. If more people are working from home, then change the permits, cut the red tape, put real pressure on small-minded landlords and anonymous private equity companies, and turn vacant office space into homes or creative work spaces. Affordable ones.
We have a lot to be thankful about here. Vibrant neighborhoods filled with independent, epicurious citizens, a hive of socially conscious small businesses, and an abundance of food and drink culture. All the unique qualities that make a city different and special are here: talented musicians and writers, powerful women’s sports teams, ubiquitous food carts, vintage shops, and a plethora of Asian, Latin American and vegan restaurants. It’s a short journey, also, to some of the most beautiful landscapes and seascapes on earth right on our doorstep. I hope you can come with me to explore and celebrate the place where we live.