A Comic Celebrating Portland’s Behind the Museum Café

Portlanders adore a hideaway, a hangout, a meetup, be it a cozy nook or a raucous party. Locals will fawn over their tucked-away coffee shop, dusty dive bar, Thursday-night bike ride, monthly silent disco. Some prefer to keep their third places to themselves; others happily swap social spaces, favorite volunteering gigs, or weekly pop-ups. These are the touchstones of life in Portland, a way to stave off the city freeze—where you make friends, build community. 

Nonfiction comics creator and editor Shay Mirk has frequented these sorts of unique places and ongoing events since moving here in 2008. Mirk often uses their medium to tell stories, whether that’s an illustrated oral history of Guantanamo Bay or a hand-drawn personal-essay-meets-zine, photographed and posted on Instagram.

In Portland Monthly‘s new quarterly column, the North Portlander will write and draw an homage to some corner of the city, be it a queer dance night or a favorite boutique, interviewing the main characters to capture the story behind the scenes.

For the first edition of Love Letters, Mirk crafted a portrait of downtown Portland tea shop Behind the Museum Café, a sweet spot for cups of hojicha, matcha brownies, and the effusive warmth of owner Tomoe Horibuchi.