July 2, 2014, by Blue-Green team

7 pm in the lobby…

May 2014 saw research associates and students from the Blue-Green Cities team visit Portland to conduct co-location research with counterparts from several US institutions, led by Alan Yeakley at Portland State University. This was the Clean Water for All project (CWFA). During the first week of the project, the UK co-investigators visited Portland to provide project leadership and get the research programme rolling.

Despite everyone’s busy schedules, and all of the different topic work that was underway, members of the Blue-Green contingent kept free one important time of the day.

Led by our social secretary Dick Fenner, our evening entertainment consisted of a tour of Portland’s eateries. From the Pearl District to Chinatown, we took in a broad range of what this Pacific Northwest city had on offer. One we sadly never got to revisit was Departure, a classy Asian restaurant on the top Macy’s, a favourite from last years’ trip (part of the Portland fact-finding mission).

Over the course of the week we visited several brew-pubs, a speciality in Portland. The most memorable was Henry’s 12^th Street Tavern in the Pearl District, where we met  attentive waiter Robbie. After being harassed by Lindsey (project administrator, Blue-Green Cities), he realised that his three-strike system for customer service was going to be put under some pressure. The food itself was fairly good, but the main attraction of the brew-pubs is naturally their extensive selection of locally-brewed beer.

Our tour did, however, receive some setbacks, including attempted visits to Portland’s only Mexican restaurant that was not a fast food joint (after a 45-minute trek we found a private party had booked the whole place out), and Jimmy Mak’s jazz club, where despite Dick’s enthusiasm, we were wary of the food quality and the fact that they could ‘probably’ accommodate seven of us, but we would all be at different tables. Maybe next time.

Blog post by Shaun Maskrey, University of Nottingham.

Read more about the Clean Water for All 2014 research project on our website and download the inception report (working document, 1 MB)

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