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I read some tourist guides on Portland last night and got mad and confused and made a list of some of the places I personally think I'd be more likely to suggest to people. Today I am no longer mad and confused, but I still want to share my list of fun spots I like.

This list is heavily biased from being written by an artsy, introverted writer-type who doesn't really drink but enjoys a nice vibe. It's not a comprehensive list of every cool place in Portland. At the time I tried to pick from a variety of areas I didn't find mentioned in lists online.

Portland, with all its faults, has a lot of really cool places and things to do! Maybe one of these places can help give more texture to a future trip!

Things I would like to add:

Memory Den - a gigantic multi story thrift mall with dozens of side rooms, a basement theater lounge, artist studios, a cafe, a bar, a library, a goth store, and for some reason a Fallout theme (it's even named after a location in the games), just fun to explore and some of it is beautifully decorated:

Movie Madness - a huge video rental store that's also a film museum, displaying original props and costumes from famous films, they even have the model ghostbusters house used on-screen, the actual "fight club" logo soap bar and a chestburster production maquette. Also has a mini screening room where they host indie films and events. Currently moving to a larger location but still open!

Floating World Comics - not just a comic book store; it sells rare graphic novels and art books from around the world, indie and local books, and vintage japanese imports like kaiju toys and model kits. Fascinating just to browse! Also currently in the process of moving.

Retro Game Bar - a bar with drinks and food that is also a console gaming library, where you can pay to pick out a console and games to play while you're there.

Nishimoto Ryota

"UniSeg, preciso que você fique parada aí até eu chegar."

[SecUnit, I need you to stay still (female form) until I arrive]

"Elas não eram os robôs-assassinos mais astutos, (...)"

[They (feminine plural) weren't the (masculine plural) most astute murder robots, (...)]

...feminine pronouns for Unidades de Segurança, SecUnits, and masculine pronouns for robôs-assassinos, murder robots...

That's not what the French translation of Murderbot does though, it uses "iel" which, while the most common gender-neutral neopronoun used by nonbinary French speakers I know, is also exclusively used by people. Like, a chair, table, etc can't be "iel", it has to be "il/elle". So "iel" preserves the gender-neutrality, but it's much less dehumanizing than "it" in English, something that I think the Portuguese solution does a particularly good job at.

The Japanese one is still really good and more people need to appreciate it:

In the Japanese translation of the books, Murderbot uses the genderless neopronoun 弊機 (heiki), which means through its characters "both “bad/evil robot” and “this second-rate, humble company machine"." It's also a homophone for 兵器 (heiki), meaning "weapon." The Japanese translator is Naoya Nakahara, and her translation of the first four Murderbot novellas won a translation award in Japan in 2021. 

Slow your scroll and spend some quality time with this awesome amphipod. 🤩⁠

With a transparent body, the crystal amphipod, Cystisoma magna, is essentially invisible in the dim waters of the ocean’s twilight zone. Most of their cousins grow no bigger than your fingernail, but the crystal amphipod can fill your entire hand. And unlike many other hyperiids who live life hidden as hitchhikers, crystal amphipods swim freely in the open water. Living out in the open with nowhere to hide requires a different kind of stealth. ⁠ With the help of MBARI’s ships and deep-sea robots, our researchers and their collaborators revealed the secret to the crystal amphipod’s invisibility. Their exoskeleton is covered in microscopic shaggy structures or a fine coating of biofilm. Tiny spherical bacteria, only nanometers in diameter, work like the anti-reflective coating on eyeglasses to help Cystisoma camouflage in an environment that is sorely lacking in places to hide from hungry predators.

The crystal amphipod faces a fragile future. As industries look to the deep seafloor for mining precious metals, even animals living far above the bottom are at risk. Mining these metals will release plumes of dirty wastewater into the ocean’s twilight zone, clouding the crystal amphipod’s vision and interfering with their invisible superpower.