Wednesday, November 7, 2007

PDX = MKE

This blog entry is extremely overdue. But, hey, I'm a busy kinda chick. And lazy. And forgetful.

This past May Dale and I took our first trip to the Pacific NorthWest. We went to Seattle and Portland and a few meanderings between the two. We had planed on a quickie across the border to Vancouver, but the State Department put the kibosh on that -- meaning Dale's passport didn't arrive until a week AFTER we got home.
We had a most excellent trip. The weather was super, only one day of rainy weather. Lots of good food, beautiful scenery, and once we learned to tell people we were from Michigan instead of SoCal--lots of friendly natives. (gosh these folks are touchy....don't worry, I am SO not cool enough to move there...and I DO luv my Mac!)

This is a little photo essay on "How Portland is like Milwaukee". Portland is one awesome little town. A beautiful river, lively neighborhoods, fun, friendly people and lots of cool architecture. Hey, you could say the same about Milwaukee too, aina? I was blown away on the number of similarities between the two towns. OK, except that in Milwaukee you get gun violence and Portland gets Matt Groening. Not fair.

Portland and Milwaukee are both located on rivers which form the core of the city.

Portland:


Milwaukee:


The city planners must have bought the same blueprints at "Bridges-R-Us".

Portland:


Milwaukee:

(thank you to John December for this photo)

Both cities have similar architecture--bungalows and brick construction.

This Portland firehouse is now a private residence.


This Milwaukee firehouse uses the famous "Cream City" bricks.



Even the city-issued house numbers are the same!

Portland:


Milwaukee:


The musical stylings are similar too! Oh wait....maybe not.

Portland has:


Milwaukee's (in)famous son:


The most surprising thing was that PORTLAND HAS BUBBLERS! Well, THEY call 'em "drinking fountains" but they are most definitely bubblers of the classic style. Note the orbs with water "bubbling" out. Now, THAT'S a bubbler!

Portland's bubblers were installed by some teetotaler civic leader way back when to provide sailors on shore leave an alternative to Demon Rum.


A not too fancy Milwaukee example:


Here's Dale's (Mr. Professional-like Website maker) site where you can check out the other cool photos and stuff from our PacNW trip....and see the wonder that is (or was) The Idaho Spud!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mary Ruth, I will most certainly pass this around, and hope that others will come take a peek, because if they do, they will love it as much as I do.
Would you consider putting my website for the book on your linky links? If you do, it's www.fiftywaysbooks.com. You can impress all your readers with the fact that you know me!!!

Wandering Chopsticks said...

Mary Ruth,
Aww, you're making me miss home! And they're not bubblers, they're just drinking fountains. ;)

meghan said...

Wait, did you know I was a PDX native?

MaryRuth said...

Meghan--you mentioned you were from Portland at the end of your post about Milwaukee. That's why I posted the link! Pretty freaky, hey?