Monday Night
Sarah and I checked out some websites that had lists of open mics in Portland and decided to play one to showcase our new song. After getting really excited to share our music with the People of Portland, we went to both of the open mics that were within walking distance, only to find that neither one of them was actually happening for one reason or another. It was a bit too late to trek out to the one that really was happening, so we decided to console ourselves with some Old Town Pizza. Obviously we had our instruments with us, which led to a conversation with one of the employees (Mark) who (surprise surprise) happened to be in a band (is everyone in a band?). We told him what happened, and he told us he was playing an acoustic set the following night that we could probably also play at. What an offer! He didn’t even know what we sound like…ha. (Most everyone in Portland is really nice and super friendly and really chatty but in a genuine way. It’s just not weird to have conversations with strangers here…everyone does. It happened last night when we were grocery shopping…this kid just started talking to us when we were trying to decide what kind of beer to get. There are so many good beers here from all these different brewing companies in the Northwest! Apparently Portland is the microbrewery capital of the country.)
Tuesday
After a long day of making necessary materials and recruiting in the SE for people to work for WFP, we went to Bar of the Gods for the show. Mark very kindly arranged for us to play a couple songs before his set, and they were received quite well for the kind of crowd you can imagine being at a place called Bar of the Gods. He played after us; his band is called Westfold, but it was just him and his guitarist. They were pretty good, and we met some good folk and had some good conversations with them all about art and politics and kitties. We left at closing time, so we took a cab home. Our cabbie was really awesome; he inspired me to share the following facts:
There are 13-14,000 cabs in NYC. I couldn't find how many cabs there are in Portland, but I'm sure it's significantly less...
Wednesday
Finished prepping lots of materials for the canvass, went grocery shopping, made food, watched Amelie (SUCH a good movie! Definitely in the top 5 I've ever seen). Doesn’t sound like a lot, but all of those activities are pretty time-intensive.
Sidenote
Do you remember the days when you didn’t have to dial area codes before local calls? Is it like that anywhere anymore?
Today!!!
This morning I woke up really early. Okay, actually I woke up at 9am. But that’s really early for me! I’m going to make a concerted effort to wake up early. It’s so nice to have free time in the morning, and the morning is a wonderful time of day. I met Janice (one of Mother’s best friend’s younger sister) for coffee at Backspace, which was lovely. Her 9-year-old daughter goes to a Waldorf school, which sounds like the shit. Janice seems really awesome, too. She bikes with her daughter to school and offered to take me to the gorge(!), which I’ve heard is breathtaking. After the hang with Janice, I finalized some documents and spreadsheets for work, made an awesome lunch, and headed to the WFP office in the SE to meet up with Aimee and Ted (coworkers…more on them later). Today was our first day canvassing in Portland! It went okay…it’s going to take some getting used to, especially since we’re in a new place with a new rap and having not canvassed in 2 months. This is a really liberal part of the country; there aren’t very many conservatives, but I talked to a lot of people who believe that the political system in this country is fundamentally fucked, which I agree with, but isn’t it better to work within a broken system than to do nothing at all? This is a question I’ve struggled with for some time…
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