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"I'm a writer, which is a fancy way of saying I have no social life. When I do venture outside, more often than not it's to go to a bookstore. Everyone knows about Powell's, but this city offers so much more. Broadway Books is, by virtue of the people who run it, one of the finest small bookshops in the country. There's the delicious chaos of Longfellow's, a serendipity engine where you won't find what you're looking for but will leave with a dozen other books anyway. There's Title Wave, a place where you can stock up on a year's worth of used books for the price of a single new hardcover. There's the connoisseur-ish, old-school vibe at Mother Foucault's. There's In Other Words, a world-class bookshop and community center that does a lot of important civic work in a town that sorely needs it. There's Street Books, a bicycle-powered mobile library that is one of the single best ideas I've seen in this town. In a country where so many neighborhoods are effectively storytelling deserts, Portland punches above its weight."
—Omar El Akkad, former Globe and Mail reporter and author of the 2017 novel American War
2. TriMet Could Soon Stop Charging Life-Ruining Fines
3. You Can Now Smoke Weed While Listening to Live Classical Music
4. Oregon's Unemployment Rate is Incredibly Low
5. Your Favorite Sports Team is Only a Short Walk Away
6. The Blazers Star in Some Weird-Ass Commercials
7. We Now Have a Mountain Bike Park in the City
9. Portland is the Playground of Japanese Architect Kengo Kuma
10. You Can Soon Stream Local Music at the Library
11. Oregon Just Became the First State to Defelonize Hard Drugs
12. East Portland is Getting an Aerial Tree Walk
13. We're the World Capital of Canned Wine
14. Portland is a Hotbed of Small Bookstores
15. Unlike any Other City, We Have Multiple Niche Comedy Festivals
16. Our Developers Are Privatizing Socialism
17. The Nation's Best Airport Keeps Getting Even Better
18. We're Home to the World's First Sneaker Design School
19. Portland Scored the World's First Dog Tap Room
20. Weed Prices are Falling From Cheap to Damn Near Free, and We Haven't Yet Found the Bottom
21. Our Local Mini-Mart Chain Makes Snickers Give You Free Candy Bars
22. The View From the MAX Orange Line is One of the Most Striking and Beautiful Paintings in the City
23. We Are Still No. 1 in Semifactual Superlatives
24. We Make Biking So Accessible
25. You Can Crowdfund Anything Here
26. We Find So Many Ways to be Anti-Trump
27. Our Malls Are Becoming Cultural Embassies
28. Our Humane Society Rescues Pets From All Over the Country