Portland Culture Cheat Sheet

What Every Portlander Needs to Know What are the movies, books, comics, songs, and pop culture moments (as found on YouTube) that define our city? We’ve brought them all together, right here.

In this issue:

Arts & Culture

Pop Culture

Your Ultimate Portland Pop Culture Cheat Sheet

What are the movies, books, comics, songs, and pop culture moments (as found on YouTube) that define our city? We’ve brought them all together, right here.

11/14/2016 Edited by Fiona McCann

Culture Cheat Sheet: Comics

6 Comics Heroes with Serious Portland Cred

Meet the characters who supercharge our city’s comics scene.

11/14/2016 By Marty Patail

Culture Cheat Sheet: Books

Why Beverly Cleary Is Portland’s Undisputed, Unofficial Novelist Laureate

It’s Ramona’s world. The rest of us are just living in it.

11/14/2016 By Zach Dundas

Culture Cheat Sheet: Books

The Essential Portland Bookshelf: 32 Books That Define Our City and State

Sometimes a Great Notion to Geek Love, these are the texts that express, entertain, and enlighten us.

11/14/2016 By Fiona McCann

Culture Cheat Sheet: Music

Stumptown Soundtracks: A Hard-Rocking Portland Playlist

These heart-racing tunes will help fuel your anger about rising rents, social ills, or fluoride.

11/14/2016 By Fiona McCann

Culture Cheat Sheet: Music

Stumptown Soundtracks: A Seductive Portland Playlist

Perhaps you’re under a blanket on a hillside, or hiding out the winter in your tiny house: either way, invite some company and hit play. You’re welcome.

11/14/2016 By Fiona McCann

Culture Cheat Sheet: Music

Stumptown Soundtracks: An Eclectic Playlist for the Day-Drinker

Soundtrack farmers market mornings, Mount Tabor afternoons, and early happy hours with this playlist: echt Portland in its unclassifiability.

11/14/2016 By Fiona McCann

Culture Cheat Sheet: Music

Stumptown Soundtracks: Homegrown Shoegaze for Rainy Walks (and Dampened Hearts)

These Portland tunes pair well with downpour and despair.

11/14/2016 By Fiona McCann

Culture Cheat Sheet: Essay

Portland’s Cultural Exports Might Never Take Over the World. Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing.

Almost famous is just fine by us.

11/14/2016 By Shawn Levy

Culture Cheat Sheet: Movies

The Ultimate DIY Oregon Film Festival

Clear your weekend. Here’s a seven-movie crash course on Beaver State screentime.

11/14/2016 By Fiona McCann

B-Sides

Trumpeter Farnell Newton Doubles Down on Portland

Jazz to funk to soul, the trumpeter and songwriter juggles musical genres and countless projects.

11/14/2016 By Casey Jarman

Essay

Why We Need Portland’s Burgeoning Hip-Hop Scene Now More Than Ever

A onetime local rapper reflects on the young talent and activism currently boosting the city’s scene.

11/14/2016 By Mac Smiff

Eat & Drink

Wise Up: Get Cooking

6 Places in Portland to Up Your Kitchen IQ

Knife sharpening to cocktail making to pig butchery, here are the city’s best spots to build your kitchen skills.

11/14/2016 By Benjamin Tepler

Eat Here Now

Why Did Cult Tokyo Ramen Shop Afuri Come to Portland? Because We’ve Got the Water.

“Portland water makes our broth the best,” says the CEO. “Afuri cannot exist without the water.”

11/14/2016 By Kelly Clarke

Word of Mouth

The 11 Best Things Food Critic Karen Brooks Ate in 2016

Beef tartare to old-school pizza to Japanese shaved ice, here are the year’s defining dishes.

11/14/2016 By Karen Brooks

Recipes

Two Delicious Cocktails to Warm Up Your Winter

A toddy laced with apple butter? Mezcal-spiked drinking chocolate? We’ll take both.

11/14/2016 By Kelly Clarke

Recipes

Five Phenomenal Winter Cookies

Nostalgic Christmas treats to jam-filled Italian classics, these are the holiday confections to crush any bake-off.

11/14/2016 By Benjamin Tepler

Editor's Note

Editor’s Note

Can Pop Culture Conquer All?

At the very least, it can shake us out of our weary funks.

11/14/2016 By Zach Dundas

Home & Real Estate

Next-Level Bodega

Mini Mini Reimagines the Convenience Store

The East Burnside mini-mart elevates the utilitarian corner store to a haven of Helvetica, crowlers, and niche snacks.

11/14/2016 By Jason Buehrer

News & City Life

Education

Wise Up! A Guide to Portland’s Best, Weirdest, and Most Enlightening Educational Opportunities

Get smart, get crafty, or get cooking with the city’s coolest classes for grown-ups.

11/14/2016 Edited by Rebecca Jacobson

Wise Up: PCC

A Beginner’s Guide to Portland Community College

Ninety thousand students. Four main campuses. PCC can be tough to navigate, but here are three tips for taking the leap back to school.

11/14/2016 By Webb Wright

Wise Up: Learn Something New

Yes, You Can Study That: 29 Portland Classes You Didn’t Know Existed

Tuvan throat singing to hula dance to beekeeping, it’s time to get enlightened.

11/14/2016 By Rebecca Jacobson

Wise Up: Get Artsy

6 Places in Portland to Embrace Your Inner Artist

Darkroom photography to improv comedy, here are the city’s best spots to get artsy.

11/14/2016 By Ko Ricker

Wise Up: Get Crafty

Basket Weaving to Spoon Carving, WildCraft Offers Arts & Crafts for Grown-Ups

It’s like summer camp forever.

11/14/2016 By Rebecca Jacobson

Wise Up: Do It Yourself

5 Places in Portland to Get Your DIY On

Screen-printing to shoe cobbling, soapmaking to soldering, here are the city’s best places to make something with your hands.

11/14/2016 By Rebecca Jacobson

Wise Up: Alterna-Master's Degree

Reed College’s Only Graduate Program Puts Intellectual Exploration above Practical Payoff

Or, how to become a Reedie past age 22.

11/14/2016 By Zach Dundas

Wise Up: Humanity in Perspective

How a Class Designed for Low-Income Portlanders Changed One Mind—and Life

Mary Thompson grew up in the foster system and didn’t graduate from high school. Now she’s on a course to a writing career.

11/14/2016 By Rebecca Jacobson

Wise Up: Get Smart

7 Places in Portland to Exercise Your Brain

From literary seminars to an underground grad school, here are the city’s best places to stretch your mind.

11/14/2016 By Rebecca Jacobson

The Shakedown

2016: Sizing Up the Year That Can’t End Soon Enough

No, really. What was that?

11/14/2016 By Marty Patail

Skull Games

How One Portland Special Agent Went Undercover to Stop Poaching and Smuggling

Make no mistake: we’re part of the world’s poaching and smuggling epidemic. Meet the Portland investigator battling it.

11/14/2016 By Ramona DeNies

Tao of Meow

Meet the Man Using Data Sets to Map Portland’s Feline Friends

Want to see the city’s finest cats? Follow computer programmer Max Ogden on Instagram.

11/14/2016 By Amy Martin

Star Trek

14 Portlanders Who Made It Big in Tinseltown

Clark Gable to Christina Hendricks, these screen stars all passed through Portland on their way to Hollywood.

11/14/2016 By Marty Patail

Politics

Why Did Oregon Ban Rent Control?

Rent control is a hot-button topic today, but the story goes back to 1985.

11/14/2016 By Arlo Voorhees

Oregoniana

Travel Back to 1846, the Year Oregon Became American

In other words, that time we were dumped by the Queen of England.

11/14/2016 By Zach Dundas

PDX Index

Portland Thorns 2016: A Remarkable Season Ends One Game Too Soon

All the soccer stats you need to know.

11/14/2016 By Ko Ricker

Dispatch

Is There a Secret Lake on Mount Tabor?

Investigating the extinct volcano’s mysterious springs.

11/14/2016 By Aaron Gilbreath

Style & Shopping

Holidays 2016

Handmade Rugs to Repurposed Rings, Your Essential Holiday Gift Guide

Grab a nog. With these 12 locally made gifts, your shopping is done.

11/14/2016 By Eden Dawn

Ventures

Versi Carves Out a Bigotry-Free Space for Latino Digital Commerce

Founded by a trio of Mexican-born entrepreneurs, the Portland start-up is a Spanish-language digital Yellow Pages.

11/14/2016 By Marty Patail

Travel & Outdoors

Field Notes

Trail of the Month: High-and-Dry Winter Walks at Canemah Bluff

Look out over the Willamette River from Oregon City’s 332-acre nature park.

11/14/2016 By Brian Barker