Portland’s West Side Is Worth Your Time

When I was a teenager, visiting Portland meant visiting its west side. My mom, friends, and I would book a room at the funky-fabulous Inn at Northrup Station with its 2002 Scooby Doo color scheme, drop off our bags, and explore. We’d bop down NW 23rd—my mother still calls it “trendy-third”—or roam Pioneer Place. I fondly (and maybe with a cringe) remember chatting up a Hegel-reading boy on the steps of Pioneer Courthouse Square, trawling the Blue Room at Powell’s, catching the Thermals at the Crystal Ballroom, sliding into the Roxy for chicken strips post-Roseland rock show. We’d crack into powdered sugar–topped b’stilla at Marrakesh, awaiting the belly dancers who would roam among the squat tables. My friends and I would clink fruity mocktails at Departure, pretending we were older than we were in a city larger than it was.

At some point, via social osmosis or old Bon Appétit articles, I learned that the west side was allegedly uncool, even kind of cheesy; the actually cool stuff happened on the other side of the river, on Alberta or Mississippi or Hawthorne. The west side’s pull signaled my bridge-and-tunnel status (if a two-hour commute from Eugene counts as bridge-and-tunnel). 

As I became a real-deal local, however, I began making new memories on the west side. I went to parties at the Hoxton and Chinese staple Republic Café (the latter has stood in Old Town for more than a century). I spent afternoons in Nob Hill (p. 61), flipping through the racks at vintage shops. I admired the one-of-a-kind jumpsuits behind the tea shop at Barnes and Morgan. I chased oysters with martinis at the Love Shack as snack-filled carts rolled by. I braved the gnarly rush hour slog down Sunset Highway and ate the best Korean food I’ve had in years in Beaverton. And as I wandered the west side, be it the area around Portland State University or Lower Macleay Park, I would stumble across block parties, festivals, drag shows, street fairs. I was startled by their liveliness, while neighbors rolled their eyes: We’ve been here, they seemed to say. We never left. 

Of course, the west side has changed in the past 20 years. It grapples with the same challenges of many US cities—challenges Lauren Yoshiko untangles in her expansive dive into Old Town’s past, present, and future. But on the left side of the Willamette, you’ll find some of Portland’s most stunning buildings and sculptures, including an internationally renowned fountain, destination boutiques, unassumingly exceptional restaurants, inspiring nonprofits, and oases of verdant beauty. And you’ll find people—lifelong residents and newbies, ambitious 20-somethings and seasoned septuagenarians—actively trying to make this place bolder, more creative, more compassionate, and, ultimately, cooler. If that isn’t a reason to head west, I don’t know what is. 

Brooke Jackson-Glidden
Editor in chief