Tranny pride, gay pride, this is rainbow city

Portland has always appealed as one of the most liveable of cities in the USA.

Worryingly, the traffic is starting to become an issue. There have been massive backlogs on the major arterial roads. As in so many places now, the populations and the car numbers are starting to choke things up at peak hours.

Ah, but it is the city of peaks. There on its horizon are snow-capped Mt Hood and Mt St Helen. They're a pretty spectacular backdrop when they are visible.

Yep, Portland is the most fabulous American city.

It is the city of Powell’s Bookstore - the greatest bookshop in the world.

It is a city with dope stores on every corner. There are people with waving billboards on corners directing the public to this or that specialist marijuana store - the new Green industry of this green state.

Cannabis is the major agricultural crop here now.

Who knew this legal marijuana business could have grown so immense and be such a thing of carefully-regulated efficiency? It is a sophisticated science.

It reaps the government hearty taxes and has opened up myriad new collateral industries, among them the design and manufacture of dope pipes. Glass blowers seem to have cornered the market but there is everything imaginable being made, as well as myriad souvenirs for visitors like us, magazines and recipe books...even ashtrays.

It is a signpost for the world.

This is not to say that wine is out of favour. The local wines are elegant and lovely.

We have had a splendid sojourn here with my cherished chums, Rachel and Bob.

It is hard to leave.

As it is with old friends, there is a sense that the conversation has just resumed and we could talk on for aeons.

But we have cooked together and laughed together.

Bob has been making stunning cashew cheeses, a vegan specialty. He makes them in red curry flavour and he makes them smoked and double-smoked.

It is hard to stop eating them, especially warm from the smoker.

I've helped him in bottling his beer. Yep, if he was the chief cook, I was chief bottle washer. We've been to a cider festival where we all wore "Designated Driver" wristbands because we were not there to drink but to listen to some fabulous music. And, by chance, to see some of the most sublime gemstone jewellery I have ever encountered.

We have been out eating kosher food at Kenny and Zukes.

I had my fix of matzo ball soup - Jewish penicillin and the ultimate comfort food all in one.

We have rambled through the wonders and wonders and wonders of Powell’s.

It is so big one has to use a map.

it swarms with bookish people, who are the best people, of course.

It is full of temptations which, for reasons of weight and bulk, the traveller must resist.

It reassures one that books are alive and well, that sensibilities are extant, that civilization is whole and hearty, that curiosity and self-expression are thriving...

All of this is underscored in Portland by the fabulous weekend market.

Cleverly, it is divided into two sections - one for imported market goodies such as Asian rag trade merchandise, the other just for the Oregon craftspeople. This latter is quite thrilling and refreshing in all its originality and ingenuity. Marvellous clothes and jewellery, domestic artwork, chocolates and fudges, massage stones and aromatic oils…

En route to the market, we ran into a massive street march.

Gay Pride is waving its rainbow flags ferociously in Portland.

There is deep ire at the discrimination towards transgender people denied access to women’s rooms in the Carolinas and, of course, absolute grief and outrage at the Orlando massacre.

The LGBT community has been marching the streets singing and chanting, flourishing placards and banners.

They have dressed up. They have brought their dogs and their kids.

They come young and old, flamboyant and conservative. Straights march with them.

They are a force and they will be reckoned with.

The Gay Pride sentiment does not stop there in Portland.

Rainbow flags festoon buildings.

They adorn restaurant walls. They are ubiquitous in a loving stand of societal support.

Three lovely days…

We have walked the suburb where we are staying. It is located on the flank of a cinder cone, a steep old volcanic hill in this volcanic region. Mt Hood and Mt St Helens were visible through the stands of suburban trees last night - spectacular with their snowy caps.

We have driven the city loop by day and by night admiring the bridges and the architecture.

We’ve admired the city’s public art and even the utilities markers on the footpaths.

We have gone to the Vietnamese part of town and feasted on salt and pepper squid.

We’ve sat with books and sunned on our little deck.

And now it is time to move on.

Such is life on the road.

Sucked in

Portland brags an impressive cultural life. It is one of America’s emancipated cities - politically and intellectually progressive.

Naturally, it has a Vacuum Cleaner Museum.

I was powerfully drawn to visit it, of course. Rachel, my friend and host, merrily whisked me off to its delights in her new blue Subaru.

Our menfolk chose not to join us. They repaired to the Science Museum.

But Stark’s have been selling vacuums in Portland for over 100 years, plenty of time to have collected examples of how the whole concept of vacuum cleaners has evolved.

So it’s not really as nutcase as it sounds.

It is quite serious history from both a social and an engineering point of view.

It really made me think about the lot of women a century ago when the first vacuums were being invented.

They would seem to have evolved from carpet sweepers. There are so lovely examples of quite handsome wooden carpet sweepers in the collection.

But those early electric vacuums, oh my, they were heavy. Great big iron things. It is hard to imagine women having the strength to manoeuvre them. Very fit servants must have done the housework in those houses which could afford the new-fangled things.

And the people of the past who did not have cars and a squillion labor-saving mod cons were probably a lot stronger. If not, shunting these ancient monsters around would have done the trick. Talk about work-out machines.

There are some funny stories in there. There was the Airways model which turned out to be the most unpopular vacuum in history. So heavy, inefficient and tough on carpets that it lasted only a couple of embarrassing years.

What was the thing with the broomstick with the long power cord? An attempt at an electric broom? That didn’t take off, either.

It is clear that men have been trying to invent the perfect vacuum cleaner throughout the years. There are so many models. I always hated barrel vacuums that you have to drag around. There are a lot of them there, a nightmare of them.

I note that some of the oldies also were ten-ton metal. Then there is to bag or not to bag in the uprights.

There amid the decades of new and improved models were a few which rang bells from my childhood - the round rolling ones of the 60s or 70s. I remember my mother being very proud of one of those. They were just the last thing in domestic chic.

For, indeed, vacuums came to represent the old family dream of the 50s and onwards. Every home had one. Most homes had housewives.

It is not surprising that the housewives turned to “mother’s little helper”.

Their drudgery was real.

One looks at all these machines and thinks of all those women, dressed in the garb of the day, some of it pretty heavy going in its own right.

It is suddenly really quite political.

It’s a history of toil, of women’s suppression.

And it is a history of failure.

Walk out in the contemporary showroom and what does one see?

Vacuum cleaners which look uncannily like the old museum models and making exactly the same promises of doing a better job and making the chore easier.

They still don’t have it right.

Here is the last word in new-fangled vacuums.

Why we love Portland

One reason to love a place is because good people live there.

Rachel and I have been very dear friends since we met online in an IRC chat channel back in the 1990s.

We were among the pioneers of virtual community.

This is my third visit to her in Portland. She, with husband Bob and son Alden, have also visited us in Adelaide. And they were our wedding party when Bruce and I first married in Portland’s then-famous 24-Hour Church of Elvis in 1996. It is defunct now - but we ain’t.

Rachel and Bob have just opened an Airbnb in their marvellous Purple House here - and we are the lucky ones to be their guests.

The B&B is an entirely self-contained one-room apartment - full kitchen and bathroom, two queen beds, table and chairs, desk and telly, store annex for luggage, little private balcony and even a full drum kit and enough musical instruments to jam up a concert. Before he set off on his sensational touring career with the fabulous jazz band, The Rad Trads, this was Alden’s music studio.

In his absence and moving into retirement, Rachel and Bob have purpled up the place and transformed it into this very salubrious apartment. Now it is booking out wildly on the Airbnb site - not surprisingly since it can sleep six at a pinch.

There are external stairs up to the private security-coded entrance.

By night the stairs sparkle with purple pin lights. Against the skyline of a Portland sunset, they make a particularly pretty picture.

Rachel and Bob live downstairs with their darling dog, Sassy.

We are spending as much time together as we can. Greedily stocking up on long affection to keep us going until the next time we can get together.

Unlike us, they are “makers”. Bob makes everything from giant garden bells to cashew butter.

Rachel makes amazing cakes and can make candy sushi from dried fruits and tapioca, among so many things.

They make wine, beer and cider.

Bob also makes music with a mean 12-string guitar.

And the “makers” surely have made this the yummiest piece of accommodation. Beside the big window with its privacy screen of decorative music notations and beneath the patchwork quilt of green and purple (my fav colours, too), I’ve slept luxuriously well. There’s a memory foam layer on this futon bed. I’ve never tried the like. Deliriously comfy. Want.

We’ve cooked breakfast from the well-stocked kitchen and sat around the table drinking Rachel’s purple sparkly cocktails - and the odd Bloody Mary.

We’s sat on purple chairs on the porch and gazed contentedly at the leafy vista.

We’ve turned on the telly. We’ve listened to vinyls on a proper record player. The Rad Trads’ new LP has just come out.

If this is what Airbnbs are about, I am rapt.

I’m recommending this one to all travelling friends. That means you.