stace and i went to portland like 2 weekends ago for my friends’, jasmine & mark’s, wedding. we’ve been suffering at our apartment for the last few months..

(gas leak, no stove since june, closet bar fell 2x, mad electrical work which made a mess, leak in the ceiling, mouse came to say hi)

and work has been rough for both of us

(management changes, project fuckery, and the existential dread of impending AI displacement)

so it was a nice change of pace to get away.

stace pretty immediately fell in love with the place because anything is better than here rn lol.

i was a little harder to convince but it was def cool. we stayed downtown and checked out the big book store, i found a really sick book about african tribal fashion. stace almost got a copy of ‘notes from underground’ but the line was too long lol. it sounded like a trip tho. i just remembered they also read ‘scentless apprentice’ this year which sounded crazy too i haven’t read literature in forever. i find it daunting because my imagination is dormant. i rely on picture books and biographies mostly.

we also checked out some good clothes store nearby. the dudes at brain dead were really cool and there was this other shop that had some vintage bape/nbhd/wtaps. i saw the yankees nbhd bape flip crewneck that i used to dream about in high school. if my closet hadn’t just collapsed from the weight of too many hoodies, i might’ve bought it.

we went to the wedding and it was really nice to be there for my friends’ union. they are a couple that i admire as individuals, each for their own qualities. mark is smart, brave, quick witted, sardonic, and bold. jasmine is adventurous, opinionated, self assured, thoughtful, and supportive. the two of them match each other so well, and as a couple they really nurture each other. i remember jasmine just impulse went to europe for a month and mark flew back and forth to join her intermittently. i’ve never heard them speak behind the other’s back, and when i heard them argue it’s always been with a lot of love. i have a ton of respect for them, and i’m very happy for them.

the next day we woke up early and ran into a friend we met at the wedding, zach. we checked out this chinese garden. it was behind this gated fence, probably to keep the many homeless in portland out. it was pretty cool in there though. the lotus flowers were in bloom so we got some nice photos. we shared some laughs and chinese flower skittles.

stace found this cool arcade nearby, it was soo cheap for all day play. we got to try lucky & wild which was on my bucket list, play metallica/kiss pinball & simpsons. oh also the star wars arcade game, the vector gfx one. pretty sick. we got some ok conveyor belt sushi and then went to see camp miasma. it was really good! i enjoyed it a lot, it was a really horny movie lol. i thought performances + imagery was good, but i did feel a bit let down by how on-the-nose the overall premise/execution was. that might’ve been the point, but it felt like it was purposely trying to misguide me, as if to play a joke on me, and i can’t say i really liked that lol.

we had a redeye back, so we wondered around to various thirft shops and went to a steakhouse and got a prime rib dinner. i demolished it but stace got too full lol. then we flew back. i was stoked playing f-zero x on my 3ds on the plane, knowing that (at the time) i was (prob) the only person in the world who could lol. and suffered hard the next day, as you do on a redeye.

overall it was a really nice get away. portland had great weather and some friendly folks. i don’t really know what the true vibe was. it seemed like there was a divide between the tourists, locals, and homeless. i’m not really sure what industry is there? just kinda had an odd vibe, but i did like it. so did stace. maybe we’ll go back there when we visit seattle sometime.