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Over the past couple years, Portland went and got itself a reputation.
TV talking heads use our home as shorthand for dysfunction and dumpster fires. Oregon politicians try to win votes in the suburbs by badmouthing the “city of roaches.” Our own leaders talk about Portland as if it’s, at best, a problem and, at worst, a lost cause. We’ve been a punchline and a punching bag.
That’s the trouble with being interesting: A lot of people think they know you.
Consider this issue a statement of defiance: The people who talk shit about Portland don’t know this city. They don’t love this city. And they don’t deserve this city.
Portland is more than a headline. More than a dysfunctional City Hall. More than its inability to build enough housing and shelter quickly enough. It’s also werewolf videos, virtual reality and spectacular sweater collections. It’s deer-antler furniture, poetry hotlines and public pianos.
Our annual Best of Portland Issue is intended as a guide to some of our city’s surprises. Like the pair of polar bears moonlighting as scientific researchers. Or the architects who specialize in treehouses. Or the smell of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies that fills a neighborhood when the wind is right.
This issue also includes our annual readers’ poll about the reliable favorites that define daily routines in their town, and we’re gratified by the thousands of you who voted.
As our staff ventured into the city, we were struck once again by how much has changed. There are neighborhoods in Portland so transformed by the one-two punch of pandemic closures and new construction that you often feel as if you’ve ventured into a new city.
Not all of these changes have been for the better. But some are for the best. This city is more equitable, more diverse and challenging us to think about whom it serves. Portland can make even its biggest fans uncomfortable—in ways that compel its residents to grow.
It isn’t always a city that works. But it’s a city that fights.
The following pages tour a Portland and its people you may not know yet. We think that’s the city worth fighting for.
—Bennett Campbell Ferguson, Assistant Arts & Culture Editor
See all of Willamette Week’s Best of Portland 2022 here!
This issue also includes the results of our annual readers’ poll about the reliable favorites that define daily routines in their town, and we’re gratified by the thousands of you who voted. Click here for the results.