Tag Archives: Pacific Northwest

Tea for two

Speaking of Canadian fall color, almost exactly two years ago I had the chance to stay at Victoria’s Empress Hotel, and see its climbing ivy in all its autumn glory. Both then and just recently, when the Tailor and I visited Victoria together, a major highlight of the visit was the Empress’s world-famous High Tea.

If dainty delicacies aren’t your thing, or you’d rather chug a thermos of coffee than sip tea out of bone china—well, I’d suggest spending your afternoon elsewhere. But for the Tailor and me, there was nothing cozier.

(And besides, the curry sandwiches are to die for.)

Bottled up

You know how much I love kitschy restaurants and giant statues of random objects—so you can imagine how happy I am whenever the two are combined into one.

And when said eatery serves up a mean huckleberry shake to boot—you can bet I’ll be a fan for life.

Heart of the city

I’m almost hesitant to include this sketch in my week of kitschy food posts, because I’m in the camp of folks who firmly believe that Twinkies aren’t food. Yet I love this building so much that I just couldn’t leave it out. The old Hostess Cake factory in Seattle has seen quite a few changes lately—and not just with the demise of the original company. That part of town is also home to a number of major construction projects, which are in the process of completely rearranging the entire neighborhood. Most recently, the building was bought out by the Franz bread company—so who knows what this corner will look like in six months? I walked by two weeks ago, and already the Hostess signs had been removed. The silhouette hearts are still there, though (for now). Here’s hoping they have many more heartbeats ahead of them.

Portland pig-out

Portland is absolutely chock-a-block with edible kitsch. This is the city that’s home to the neon pink doughnut shop filled with naughty puns, coffin-shaped party boxes and velvet Kenny Rogers paintings. The artisanal salumeria that made a tongue-in-cheek cameo on Portlandia. The coronary-inducing but oh-so-delicious pork-sandwich lunch counter, appropriately (or prophetically) named Lardo. The trouble is, there are so many places like this that even with our frequent trips and efforts to try a new restaurant on each visit (which is incredibly hard to do, since every place is so good)—well, there simply aren’t enough pages in my sketchbook.

Beargrass, bare grass

When I was on Mount Adams, the ravenous bugs prevented me from sketching the most spectacular part of the scenery: the endless meadows of cream-colored beargrass. So when I spotted it again at a native plant garden this spring, I jumped at the chance.

As an aside…I have no idea how beargrass got its name, but I would dearly love to see an actual bear standing in a field of this stuff. It would be sketchbook gold.

Notes from the front

Don’t let these pictures fool you—it might look like I was sketching in an idyllic environment, but I couldn’t spend much time marveling at the scenery or relaxing with my paints. That’s because I had to take a break approximately every 4.5 seconds to swat at biting insects, or to take cover from the dive-bombing hummingbirds.

This wasn’t a backcountry trail—it was nature’s war zone. And I’ll tell you one thing: a blank sketchbook page makes for a pretty serviceable white flag of surrender in a pinch.

Raise a glass

Whenever I feel like I’m going stir-crazy in my solitary studio, I go and have a pint of cider with my friends Barry & Renée, who own a gorgeous taproom called Pint Defiance. Next week is the first anniversary of their opening day, so I thought I’d help them celebrate by posting a couple of sketches I did there recently.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a front row seat for Pint Defiance’s beginnings—I even got to design their logo for them (and therefore add some roadside kitsch to my “serious” portfolio!). So come Tuesday, you can bet I’ll be raising a glass to toast Barry & Renée—for the past year, and for every one to come.

Cropping up

I spent one of my teenage years living on a rural military base in North Dakota. An interesting side effect of having to bus half an hour into town every day for school is that I learned to recognize every type of crop in the fields along the way. But when I moved to Washington, where they grow all kinds of things that won’t survive the short season of the northern plains, I had no idea what I was looking at half the time.

Enter the kind folks of Grant County—who clearly understand the incurably curious people of the world. As you pass the farms along any state or federal highway in the Quincy Valley (many of which are certified organic—bonus!), you’re greeted with helpful crop labels in front of every field.

It’s like they knew I was coming, and was going to want to label my sketches!

Dusky delta

As much as I love road trips, my hands-down favorite way to get between Tacoma, WA and Portland, OR is by train. Especially along the Puget Sound—where the tracks run literally inches from the shore—the views are absolutely gobsmacking. On this day, I was lucky enough to have a flawlessly sunny afternoon (in April that’s tantamount to a miracle round these parts) for my solo trip, and a return ticket at sunset. And best of all, the lovely conductor at the Portland station saw me sketching in the lobby—when he came to me in the boarding queue, he pointed at my sketchbook, gave me a wink, and assigned me a window seat on the west side of the packed train.

Wherever you are, Mr. Conductor, you completely made my day. Thanks a million.

U.F. Uh-Oh

When the Tailor and I drove to Texas last year, we planned our return route around my decades-long desire to visit Roswell, NM. I was so excited to see what kind of alien-themed kitsch would be waiting for me that I banned myself from looking online to see exactly what was there. I just didn’t want to spoil the surprise. But I did daydream about the possibilities—giant replicas of crash-landed UFOs! Thirty-foot little green men! Alien-head-shaped doughnuts! Intergalactic ferris wheels! Postcards that glow under blacklight! Costumed interpreters! Tinfoil park-ranger hats! Saucer-shaped souvenir stands on every corner! Newsstands devoted solely to the Weekly World News! Cheesy space junk encrusting every square inch of the town! I was positively quivering with anticipation.

Well, I so want to be able to tell you that it lived up to my most ridiculous fantasies—but alas, I can’t. There weren’t alien tchotchkes everywhere, nor were we surrounded by roadside attractions. All we really found was a museum (closed that day), a couple of sparse souvenir shops, and a handful of scattered E.T. effigies—so few, in fact, that I couldn’t even fill one whole spread in my sketchbook. And that makes me sad, because just think of the things Roswell could learn from somewhere like Wall Drug!

I’ve stumbled across more UFO kitsch in completely random places than I found by scouring Roswell that day. For example, in Everett, WA is a charming saucer-shaped park shelter. There’s no connection to alien lore that I know of (except maybe its proximity to the Boeing factory), but it’s charming nonetheless. How cool would this be in Roswell?!?

And then there is the totally inexplicable—and completely awesome—pair of alien-themed barbeque (!?) restaurants in North Dakota, of all places. I got to revisit the Fargo location last summer with the Tailor—and the poor man got treated to my rant about how this was how alien kitsch was done, people. Chrome dinettes and all, thank you very much.

Oh, if only I had the means to start a proper UFO tourist trap in Roswell. It would be a beautiful (and eye-frying) thing to behold.