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From The Asian Reporter, V17, #48 (November 27, 2007), page 7.
How Blue: A manual for moody Portland
Portland is one bluesy place. Living here requires access to immediate antidotes. Getting your cure for sure. And getting it quick.
Our elders say it’s our city’s setting, a nexus of muddy Northwest rivers and chilly Pacific currents, a place of shifting tectonics and pulsing immigrants. Or maybe it’s our moody weather. There’re probably a hundred reasons for tumbling into the blues — but here’s the good news: every hue of blue has a cure.
The everyday variety, what ails all of us on any overcast November afternoon, you can lift lickity-split with a Kit Kat bar. Some milky chocolate, some crispy wafer, a lot of sugar. Less than a buck. Refrigerated is best. I keep five cool precisely for this purpose.
Dogs bigger than these simply ambient blues, we easily alleviate at Annie’s Donuts in Little Saigon on N.E. Sandy. Hot coffee and an apple fritter and a warm friend, chase all juju away. Get’em while their hot.
People problems are harder. Of course they are. This level of Portland Blue includes the kind that, if untreated, can quickly lead to attempted or actual mayhem or murder of crude coworkers or stupid section supervisors. This category tops off at that vast, airless universe of girl troubles. (Ladies, lo siento — no disrespect intended.)
Boys, no need for panic. If not actually eliminated, these issues are anesthetized by an hour at the Acropolis, a bad bar way out on S.E. McLoughlin, that unloved four-lane boulevard named after that humorless, big-haired British Hudson’s Bay Company boss someone painted way up high on Oregon’s capitol building rotunda to look an awful lot like the God of Abraham and Moses. Very grumpy.
At Acropolis you can buy lively beef from a lazily meadowed Hereford and a couple of cold beers for less than ten clams, while women undress to a strictly working class juke. (Gay guys, no disrespect intended.) Those nonyas work hard, so tip well. Giving is good for the giver.
Existential Black & Blues
River bottom of all blues are existential ones. New Americans wrestle most with these. We like to call them the Black & Blues. Our elegant grandmas say it’s on account of our lack of padding. Without Western cynicism, without urbane sarcasm, without those thousand ways Yanks avoid living immediately, loving unabashedly — us tender Old World types get clobbered. Bones bruise, hearts break.
Existential Blues are, by way of analogy, the problem of a sea bass suddenly wide-eyed on a pier plank. Gasping for air, in thin air. A fish getting (for the first time) that she’s a fish. Essential issues suffocate us. Questions like: What on earth am I doing here? Or: Who am I now? And the ultimate ouch: How do I properly prepare my babies for America? For tomorrow?
For these seemingly overwhelming times, go straight to Madam Bo’s Typhoon! restaurant. Dash uptown to N.W. 23rd Avenue. Sprint inside. Typhoon’s menu is thick. Khun Bo’s repertoire is reassuring at her traditional Thai end and delightful at her Pacific Northwest experimental end.
When my future looks iffy, Tuesdays are worst, when Oregon’s dismal rain aches those spaces between these ribs, I go for Typhoon laju-laju. Fast. For sure. I go straight for dessert. Portland’s thick-thick overcast will thin, I promise. Those pig-iron clouds will fissure azure blue, a minute after a plate of Madam Bo’s kleuytod. Fried bananas.
Pisang goreng we call them back home, where fried bananas are intense competition up and down every djalan any day of the week. Gold medal aunties guard their recipes and methods as vigilantly as Soviets did their rusty rockets.
Typhoon’s fried bananas actually crackle, first bite. Crunchy coconut shards, then buttery insides. Heaven. These puppies suddenly sugar-up from getting fried real fast. Expensive oil is key, as any frittata aficionado will tell you.
Now listen ricepickers, you have to be firm with your nice waitress, about not dripping chocolate on your kleuytod. Of course, it’s a concession to local sensibilities. But be resolute. She will put her Bic to her bottom lip. She will pout. But be polite, remind her that no self-respecting krotjong splashes soya on rice, melts butter on rice, or lets a friend put chocolate on fried bananas. Never.
Steaming pisang goreng are best enjoyed outside, out on Typhoon’s lanai, under Madam Bo’s awning. Tuesday’s rain will pause. Traffic will pick up. But be at peace, imagine those tail lamps as a dreamy amber river, slow as a Kilauea lava, flowing east, flowing easy down N.W. Everett Street. Tomorrow you’ll be better. Selalu. Always.