SPE Conference Tours

General Information

Portland’s downtown core is very compact, and mass transit is frequent, reasonably priced and safe. Therefore, you only need a good pair of shoes and some curiosity to experience a bit of what Portland has to offer. Southwest (downtown) and Northwest (Pearl District) Portland are grids, consisting of numbered north-south avenues and named east-west streets. To make things even simpler, the streets in Northwest are alphabetical: Burnside is the divider between SW and NW, then come Couch (pronounced to rhyme with “smooch”), Davis, Everett, Flanders, Glisan (sounds like Liam Neeson), etc. A conference map (272k pdf) will be in your conference goody bag that will make everything quite clear.

There will be an escorted tour to the Chinese Garden and the Japanese Garden on Thursday, March 17. See details after the Tour #3 description.

Walking Instructions

TOUR #1: BOOK CULTURE

From the conference hotel, walk north on SW 6th Avenue, passing Pioneer Courthouse Square. If the sun’s out, or at least it’s not raining, you can see what’s doing in “Portland’s living room”. Turn up Yamhill Street (look both ways for MAX light rail trains), and walk up to SW 10th. At 10th, cross the street and turn right, and you’ll pass the Multnomah County Central Library, a lovely building that was carefully renovated about a decade ago. Stop in to see the public art that’s been incorporated into the building, especially the phantasmagoric bronze tree in the children’s library. Keep walking down 10th, along the trolley line, until you get to the triangular intersection at 10th, W Burnside, and SW Oak Street. Straight ahead, you’ll see the main branch of Powell’s Books. But before you get lost in Powell’s city-block-wide, three-stories-tall treasure house of new and used books, turn down Oak, and visit Counter Media and Reading Frenzy (conveniently right next door to each other). Here, you’ll find alternative publications of all kinds: zines, small-press manifestoes, obscure chapbooks, rants, erotic idylls—in short, all that makes America great. Then go tackle Powell’s.

TOUR #2: CLASSICAL CHINESE GARDEN:
SERENITY IN THE MIDST OF CONFERENCE MADNESS

From the conference hotel, walk across 6th Avenue to any bus shelter, and take the first bus in which the driver says that he or she stops at NW Everett or Flanders. Tell the driver you’re “Fareless”, which will not only not get you kicked off the bus, but you’ll be allowed to ride free to the vicinity of the Classical Chinese Garden, an urban oasis. When you disembark at Everett or Flanders, you’ll find yourself in Portland’s small Chinatown. Walk down (east on) either street, until you get to the walled block between 2nd and 3rd. There’s a ticket booth, and various bits of chinoiserie let you know you’ve struck pay dirt. Admission is $5.50 for students with ID, and $7.00 for just ordinary people. After you’ve made the rounds, and imbibed a little tranquility, be sure to stop into the teahouse for a bit of green tea and a calming cookie or two. Call (503) 228-8131 for hours and other information, or visit www.portlandchinesegarden.org.

TOUR #3: JAPANESE GARDEN: SERIOUS SERENITY IN THE MIDST OF ETC

You’ll need to time this tour carefully, because although you’ll only be taking the bus 11 minutes out of downtown, the bus only runs hourly! From the conference hotel, walk a block south to SW main, then east two blocks to SW 4th Avenue, and find a bus shelter, which should mention that the #63/Washington Park bus stops there. The ride up to the Japanese Garden costs $1.35 ($1.05 for students with ID) and takes all of 11 minutes, depending on traffic. The garden is about 5-1/2 acres, which can easily be reconnoitered in an hour to an hour and a half, depending on how closely you want to examine the details. It’s considered (by students of Japanese design) to be one of the most authentic gardens outside Japan. If it’s not raining too hard, you’ll also get a lovely view of the city skyline--if it happens to be clear, you’ll also get an eyeful of 11,000-foot Mount Hood, about 45 miles away. Admission costs $4.00 for students with ID, $6.50 for the rest of the world. Garden info at (503) 223-1321 or www.japanesegarden.com. Call Tri-Met at (503) 238-RIDE, or go to www.trimet.org to find out bus schedules.

SPE is offering two informal tours for conference attendees, to the Japanese Garden and the Chinese Classical Garden. There are admission fees for both tours, as well as bus fare to the Japanese Garden. Both tours leave from the Hilton lobby promptly at 12:30 on Thursday the 17th.

TOUR #4: RUNNING AROUND

If running is as necessary to you as, well, everything else in the world, here’s a quick, accessible, not-so-long run. The loop created by connecting Tom McCall Waterfront Park, on the west side of the Willamette River, and the Eastbank Esplanade, works out to about a mile and a half. If that seems too namby-pamby, you might need to run it a few times to get yourself ready to sit down for most of the day. From the hotel, travel (carefully-look both ways) east on Salmon Street until you cross into the green space at Waterfront Park. Run to the left of the large fountain (north), passing the sunken semicircular steps to reach the wide harborside sidewalk, and continue north along the river. You’ll pass under a couple of bridges, and then the sidewalk will end, and you’ll be shunted onto the lower level of the Steel Bridge. At the far end of the bridge, on the east bank of the river, take a right, and move south down the esplanade, dodging the occasional bit of public art, until (after passing under the Burnside and Morrison Bridges again), you’re directed up a ramp and onto the sidewalk on the Hawthorne Bridge. After dodging bikes and pedestrians while you’re crossing the bridge, take the right-hand off-ramp, watching out for the strange curb-like drop to your left that sometimes catches the unwary ankle. You’ll find yourself back at the fountain in Waterfront Park, from whence you simply retrace your steps to the hotel, and ahhh, the hot shower.

TOUR #5 GALLERY WALK

This year, in response to the geographical nature of Portland, and years of past complaints, we elected to make the gallery tour a self-guided affair rather than a glitch-filled bus-a-thon. You’ll find a listing of galleries that are showing digital/analog photography during the conference in the program guide. Venues are listed by location, with downtown and Pearl District galleries first. Gallery locations can be found on the downloadable PDF map (272k). Or just snag someone a) who lives here, b) who’s at least familiar with the place, or c) who’s been walking around the city a bit already. Remember that you can catch any bus that runs into the Pearl (ask before boarding) on Sixth Avenue, say the magic word “fareless”, and hop it for free. When you’re ready to return, you can get back to the Hilton by doing the same thing in reverse on 5th Avenue. If you want to go to higher numbered streets in the Pearl, you can also catch the trolley to NW by boarding on SW 10th and Yamhill (across from the Central Library) and returning by way of SW 11th and Taylor (behind the library).

Galleries will be open during normal business hours on Thursday and Friday, and have been asked to remain open on Saturday night for SPE until at least 8:30. Conference programming ends at 4. This means you have plenty of time to join up with friends and see some shows on Saturday evening before you change into your dancing outfit for the traditional closing night dance party, which begins at 9:30 pm in the Pavilion Ballroom, or if you plan on going to the Women’s Caucus Video Program at 9:30 pm in Council room.

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