It was brought to my attention recently that the end of February marked my 5 year anniversary of moving to Oregon. To commemorate this occasion, I thought I’d list out a few of my very favorite things about Portland.

The assortment of beer that is available in this town is amazing. Oregon has some of the best microbreweries (Hopworks, Ninkasi, Double Mountain), some of the best stores for buying beer (Belmont Station, Hawthorne Fred Meyer <-- weird but true), and some of the best bars with rotating taps (Horse Brass, Concordia Ale House). It also has some great home brew supply stores, which is awesome because brewing beer is one of my very favorite things to do (except of course for drinking beer, which trumps pretty much everything).

Stumptown Coffee makes some of my favorite coffee. Their beans can be found all over town, but there is no better place to enjoy it than First Cup Coffeehouse. It’s close to my house, so Riley and I walk there most mornings. In fact, if Ry ever escaped from the house (which would require an uncharacteristic display of effort), I am 95% sure he would walk himself down to First Cup and wait on the side deck until someone came out and gave him a dog biscuit.

The cherry blossom trees were one of the first things I noticed upon moving here. The trees lined NW Lovejoy St., where I briefly lived before buying my house, and every year when they bloom they remind me of my first weeks in Portland.

In many ways, the weather in Portland completely blows. I do try to be accepting of this because I think anything that isn’t 75 degrees and sunny blows, and I realize that may not be entirely fair. There are good things about rain, and clouds, and sub-freezing weather. At least, I assume there must be even though at this precise moment I can’t think of a single benefit. What I do like about Portland weather, though, is the one random snow storm that we seem to get each year. The city shuts down, so I don’t have to go to work and can instead spend time with Kabluey and the pups, which automatically puts those days in a magical category along with unicorns and rainbows and Pat Benatar. Riley loves it too. He fights me tooth and nail when he has to go outside in the rain (making for a rather annoying 9.5 months a year), but at the first sign of snow he begs to go outside and frolic in the yard. He also likes when I make tiny snow men, which he later eats when I am not looking.

I should state for the record that I do miss things about San Francisco (good Mexican food, living near my brother and sister, going to Giants games, and… wait, that might be it), but moving up to Portland was definitely one of my better life decisions.

Tags: beer, PDX