A series of short posts about some of the beautiful murals in and around our amazing neighborhood.
Drive or roll or walk down N Interstate Avenue going south towards the Broadway Bridge. Pass N Russell St. On the right side of the street, at 2335 N Clark Ave., you will spy a vibrant mural showcasing over twenty women and their contributions to communities in Portland.
Portlanders cherish easy access to outdoor activities, clean air, and locally roasted coffee. While our city’s air quality has generally improved over the last 30 years, Portland, and especially the Eliot neighborhood, currently has some of the worst air pollution in the nation.
Community gardens and cooperative gardens, despite sounding like they offer the same service, differ in essential ways. Community gardens rent plots of land to individuals and those individuals tend to their plot and only to their plot. In a cooperative garden, members share the plots. That means making decisions, planting, and harvesting food together.
Continue reading Albina Cooperative Garden Seeks New Members
Vibe Cafe, located at 2808 NE MLK Jr Blvd, is an indispensable local business. It doubles as a laundromat and a cafe, serving residents of the apartments above it and the surrounding community. Vibe Cafe has been closed for a few months now because they are investing in a remodel.
In 2009, Nigerian author and storyteller Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warned about the danger of a single story. “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete,” she argues. A panoply of perspectives is crucial to overcoming stereotypes. On October 31st, Black Hat Books, a radical bookstore located on MLK Boulevard, hosted a delegation of Arab language political cartoonists. Organized by the World Affairs Council of Oregon in collaboration with the Oregon Cartoon Institute, the event aimed to foster cultural diplomacy and conversation across cultural difference.
Continue reading Bookstore Hosts Delegation of Middle East Political Cartoonist
Ricardo Nagaoka is new to the Eliot Neighborhood. He hasn’t borne full witness to its creeping gentrification over the past few decades, but he arrived at a critical time in its history. Neighborhoods are always undergoing flux, but Eliot is currently changing at an extremely fast pace. This rapid transformation is the inspiration for his latest project, a book of collected portraits of long-time local residents.
Continue reading Eliot Neighborhood through the Lens of Ricardo Nagaoka
Open Signal, located on MLK and Graham, has been producing community media content for cable access channels for the last 35 years. Their stated mission is, “With a commitment to creativity, technology and social change, Open Signal makes media production possible for everyone. We provide skills, equipment, inspiration, and we amplify local voices on five cable channels.”
Portland’s food scene is bursting at the seams with variety. We are lucky to have a restaurant located just a few blocks north of the Eliot Neighborhood that prioritizes caring for our local community as well as serving up delicious food.
A series of posts about places to take your furry friends in and around our amazing neighborhood.
Opening Pounce Play and Stay, a local cat hotel, has been a labor of love for Lisa Hernandez, owner, and Jennifer Krause, manager. They both have backgrounds caring and advocating for animals. Lisa used to work as an Animal Control Officer and Cruelty Investigator for the Louisiana SPCA and Jennifer worked for nearly a decade for Best Friends Animal Society in Los Angeles.
A series of posts about places where you can buy, borrow or donate books in and around our amazing neighborhood.
The east side of Portland has an affinity for buildings that are painted outlandishly bright colors. It is necessary in a city that has more overcast days in a year than sunnier ones. Another essential aid for surviving the melancholy Portland winter is books. Add a lime green coat of paint and books together and you get Microcosm Publishing on Williams and Graham. Microcosm Publishing is an independent publishing house that highlights skill-building, telling hidden histories, and fostering creative pursuits by publishing books about DIY skills, food, bicycling, gender, self-care, and social justice.
A series of posts about places where you can buy, borrow or donate books in and around our amazing neighborhood.
Black Hat Books is an eclectic bookstore that opened only a year ago. Located between Stanton and Graham on MLK, it is home to unique collections of Latino and Native-American literature and history, as well of one of the largest collections of African-American literature, history, and poetry in the Pacific Northwest.
In Honor of MLK Jr.: It’s Time to be Blunt about Oregon’s “Progressive” Past and Present.
On Sunday, January 15th, at an MLK Jr. Celebration titled “Advancing the Dream,” Portland’s new Mayor, Ted Wheeler, listed milestones of Oregon’s dark, racist past. Wheeler noted, “The 1857 Oregon Constitution explicitly excluded black people from living in Oregon. There were 20,000 KKK members in Portland in 1920. During WWII, Portland wanted black workers, but didn’t want black neighbors. Vanport was created outside of the city limits for a reason. 18,000 people were displaced by the Vanport floods, 25 percent of whom were black.”
Place yourself at the corner of NE 7th and NE Broadway. What businesses do you remember seeing there? A few weeks ago, I would have said, “A mattress store, a few bars, restaurants, and the Les Schwab tire dealership.”
Eliot Neighborhood 