Best Portland Walking Tour Stories of 2019, Part 4

Further memorable tales from my Portland Walking Tours of 2019.

AUGUST 20

The owner and founder was at the concierge desk when I walked in to lead this morning’s tour. He gave me a head’s up that “one of our resellers” (that is, a travel company based elsewhere that sells tickets to our tours as part of its packages) would be a guest.

They may be checking up on us, he said. I cracked that I would have to cut all the political content and dirty jokes.

Turned out the guest was a resident of one of the major capital cities of Europe, and an agent of a firm that has offices in Zurich and Berlin. He was a cool customer; stayed behind his shades most of the time, and only cracked a gentle grin in response to some of my best witticisms.

Fortunately, the couple from Vancouver BC who were also on the tour were quite lively and laughed easily, so I think I did our operation proud.

[If you’re wondering about the photo here, it was taken by Fritz Liedtke during the annual Portland Walking Tours business meeting and holiday party at our Old Town office in December 2016 for a later online promotion that never happened.]

AUGUST 21

I had only one guest today, surprisingly, but as often happens, she was a memorable one. My guest was visiting from North Carolina, but she had been born in Namibia and grew up in South Africa. Her mother had been a refugee from Berlin to Africa shortly before the Second World War.

My visitor was a talker and a questioner — before, during, and after the tour. By the time it was over, she had gotten the stories of how I’d met my wife, the account of Carole’s conversion to Judaism, and several outbursts on current politics out of me.

As we walked through Lownsdale Square after I’d mentioned the 2011 Occupy protests as well as my having marched with Carole down Third Avenue against the pending War in Iraq in 2003, she asked what good they had done, and I wrestled with the answer to that question as best I could. . . .

[At left is a photo I took of Lownsdale during the Occupy Portland encampment in late October 2011; the Spanish-American War monument at the center of the block is at the upper left.]

AUGUST 27

One of my guests today had been living in Portland for six years after having grown up in Tucson and Flagstaff. He took the tour with his mother, who was visiting from Minnesota. After I finished the tour proper, we talked about something that’s never come up before.

He said he plays soccer in parks all over the city and coaches the sport several times a week. “The very worst field in Portland is better than the ones we had in Arizona,” he told me. I asked him why he thought there was so much soccer activity here — why the Timbers took hold after multiple minor-league baseball teams came and went, as well — and he said there’s a lot of great fields and facilities.

Nike and Adidas are headquartered here and have poured money into the local infrastructure, which certainly helps. All of this was a facet of Portland of which I was previously unaware.

SEPTEMBER 14

My guests this afternoon included a pair of friends who both work at a top restaurant in a Southern metropolis — one of whom “outed” her colleague as a nationally renowned and prizewinning pastry chef. (Later, I found a photo of her on the restaurant’s home page, along with a glowing quote from the New York Times.)

The weather was sunny but cool, and my seven guests were all in high spirits. A mother-daughter pair from Lexington, Kentucky said they felt really relaxed and safe in Portland, not like other cities they’ve been to. After the tour’s end I directed four of my guests to dinner at South Park.

OCTOBER 6

Had another double-header of tours today. As we neared Waterfront Park closed to noon, we saw a lot of runners walking around wrapped in blankets after having finished a road race. I joked, “Wow, sure are a lot of homeless people wearing athletic shoes and running shorts!”

One of my guests observed, “But they’re all holding a rose, so that’s appropriate.”

[This is the view of Waterfront Park near tour’s end, right after we’ve passed fabled Mill Ends Park and the original Portland Loo . . . but in an uncharacteristically deserted state on April 29 of this year — post pandemic lockdown.]

OCTOBER 8

Four people were signed up for my tour last night, but by showtime this afternoon, three had canceled.

I was left with a single, petite guest who had a strong French accent. She told me she had been born in the French Alps town of Annecy (“very tourist-y”) and also had lived in Grenoble. But for the past 15 years she has been a French teacher in the San Francisco Bay area.

She was carrying a backpack heavy with newly purchased books, so the owner of Portland Walking Tours invited her to leave it with him at the office while she did the tour with me, for which she was grateful.

This meant she had to return to Pioneer Courthouse Square with me after the tour was over, so I got to chat with her some more. I asked her how she’d ended up in the U.S. and whether she and her husband felt settled in for the long haul or expected to return to France eventually.

She said they had discussed it, but since their son is 12 and not enthused about leaving his school and friends, they likely will wait until he is 18.

Her son was also born here, which makes him a U.S. citizen, so the parents obtained dual citizenship two years ago. I promised her we would do our best to get rid of the moron in the White House next year, and she said it did seem like bad timing (to become a citizen) in 2017 — she had had doubts about going through with it — but when she went in for her naturalization ceremony, that had been really nice.

Maybe because it was California, she said, there were no pictures of him anywhere; plus, I realized it meant I would get to vote, too!

[This is one of the crudest map-depictions of the Pioneer Courthouse Square: one of the bronze plaques that surround the famed Echo Chamber near the northwest corner and the Starbucks — which roughly half my tours don’t get to visit, depending on how large the group is, how busy the square is, and whether the Echo Chamber itself may be blocked by other activities.]

OCTOBER 14

A couple from Boston this morning were fans of “Portlandia,” the IFC cable channel sketch comedy series that had defined our town for the rest of the country of late.

When we got to the six-and-a-half ton copper repoussé statue by the same name perched on the Portland Building, the husband offered a quip that had never occurred to anyone before, including me.

I tell all my tours about how Raymond Kaskey, the sculptor, stipulated in his contract with the city that his Portlandia must be cold-waxed on a regular basis to protect her from the elements and prevent her from turning the green that happened to the Statue of Liberty over the decades, due to oxidation of the copper.

“The waxing has other advantages,” I add. “I’ve never been privileged to see this, but I understand any time a bird tries to land on Portlandia, it goes ‘shooop’ and slides right off.”

Whereupon my Boston guest chimed in: “So you CAN’T put a bird on it!”

[The selfie below was taken in the mezzanine of the Standard, across Fifth Avenue to the west from “Portlandia.” I talk about the big bronze woman a lot from this window, especially in harsh weather. Although the mask may lead you to believe the photo dates from this year and the era of the pandemic, it’s actually nearly three years old: I shot it on September 7, 2017, during the week when smoke and ash from the Eagle Creek wildfire was the worst in downtown Portland, and I decided to wear a mask as protection against that.]

OCTOBER 18

Here are today’s never-happened-before incidents.

An older couple from Cortland, Ohio showed up considerably early, so we got to visit a good while in the waiting area. They’d spent three days in the Richland area visiting wineries, and had sent three cases home. (They like all kinds of reds; didn’t drink whites at all, except for use in cooking.)

Then we moved onto the subject of bourbons. The man said he had a collection of 53 different bourbons and Irish whiskeys at home, and recommended an array that I dutifully noted down for sampling later: High West Bonfire, a bourbon/Scotch/whiskey mix out of Utah, Sagamore rye from Baltimore, Blanton’s, and Whispering Tear Irish whiskey.

A young couple from out of state joined us late, after I’d pretty much finished my introduction and preliminary comments about the tour in Pioneer Courthouse Square. She was a glamorous, petite blonde you’d suppose had been a cheerleader in high school, while her male companion was more than a head taller, and a lot broader across the chest and shoulders.

Normally, I’d expect his attention to wander, and hers to be more focused on my patter, especially since the registration was in her name. But that’s not what happened.

As I took the group around the square, I noticed she was mostly not tracking me, while he appeared fairly attentive. I kept catching her staring off into the distance. WTF?, I thought. (Whenever I’m puzzling over what’s happening with a particular tour guest — usually, its someone who never meets my glance, which tends to happen with Brits and certain Canadians; as opposed to Aussies, who totally look me in the eye, constantly  — I tend to stumble verbally because my attention is divided.)

By the time I got to the milepost at the east edge of the square, I noticed her checking her pulse in her jugular with several fingers. We barely got across SW Sixth, about 25 minutes into the tour, when she came up, touched my arm, apologized, and said she wasn’t feeling well so she would be leaving. I assumed her male companion would depart with her. But he quietly explained to me that they had been partying late the previous night, and he chose to stick with us through the entire rest of the tour(!). Didn’t spend all that much time on his mobile (checking on her, presumably) along the way, and seemed to enjoy the tour. Everybody tipped well.

OCTOBER 24 

“Was she really that big?”
I had a school tour this morning: one of four classes of second graders from Grant Watts Elementary in Scappoose that I and three other guides took through downtown.

Tours with school kids vary a lot, depending on their age, the pace we manage to set, how well the required adult chaperones keep the kids in line (some are sharp and attentive, others stare at their phones and yak among themselves), and so on.

We try to emphasize “Art, History, and Transportation” for school children (as opposed to urban design issues that surface on our grownup tours, for example — not to mention Fifty Shades of Grey), and I prefer to start by taking my groups up into Director Park (where my adult tours never go).

This morning’s bunch were perky and fun, and full of questions. One blonde urchin stuck close to me and kept asking “can we go up there? can we go into there? can we get on that train?” — and I said, boy, you wanna do EVERYTHING, RIGHT NOW, don’t you?

Fortunately, the chaperones included a real drill-sergeant mom who kept the most rambunctious boys under control. I was surprised and pleased that several of the kids immediately recognized Abraham Lincoln from a distance (Teddy Roosevelt didn’t fare so well), and at least one 8-year-old named not only Sacagawea but her infant, Jean Baptiste(!).

An odd thing as I was showing and explaining Portlandia: Several kids asked, “Was she really that big?” (in this case, 35 feet tall in her kneeling pose, more than 50 feet if she were to stand up). Apparently they understood statuary as honoring real people, period, so I had to explain more than once that Portlandia was imaginary, like fairies and trolls and giants and unicorns.

We got to the waterfront sooner than I expected to — well ahead of my three colleagues and their flocks, as far as I could tell — so, improvising fast (especially since my herd had managed to stay gratifyingly quiet during our toilet stop in the Gus Solomon Courthouse), I told them we were going to do something I’d never done before.

I figured 7- and 8-year-olds might get a kick out of riding the escalator up into the World Trade Center and walking the skybridge across First Avenue — IF they could be as quiet as they’d been in the courthouse . . . and that’s where we went, and they were!

[Below: the escalator and skybridge in the World Trade Center]

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You can read more of my 2019 Portland Walking Tour adventures in part 1 (including newlyweds, a “Grimm” fan, and a bird shit bombing) . . . part 2 (featuring some record-sized groups, more newlyweds, and the cooperativeness of “Portland rain”), and part 3 (which witnessed post-Gay Pride Day march weirdness, some very hot July days, a liquid tip in the hospitality room of The Nines, a female security officer from a UK embassy in the US, and a couple of hugs from brand-new Dr. Jack Ohman).

[NOTE: The founder and owner of Portland Walking Tours, David Schargel, called me this Sunday, June 21, to inform me that due to lack of income for the foreseeable future, outstanding debts, the company was closing down permanently.]