Getting the flavor of...Oregon’s DIY city

Oregon’s DIY city

You can’t help admiring Portland’s do-it-yourself ethos, said Brendan Sainsbury in the Toronto Globe and Mail. The city’s unofficial motto is “Keep Portland Weird,” and residents answer that command by supporting a panoply of grassroots-built businesses. Powell’s, known as the world’s largest indie bookstore, is probably one of the biggest visitor attractions in town, topping even the vacuum-cleaner museum at downtown’s Stark Vacuums. But much of Portland’s creative energy is poured into food and drink, as evidenced by the more than 500 specialized food carts that serve up everything from Bosnian flatbreads to Korean tacos. Independent coffee roasters are big here, but ale connoisseurs point to the metro area’s 30-plus microbreweries to argue that Portland is “as ‘beered’ as it is weird.” It’s said that Portland beer drinkers “would rather sell their cars” than forsake “a nightly glass of handcrafted IPA”—which might explain why the city claims to have more bike commuters than any other U.S. metropolis.

America’s largest animal haven

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To see the power of animals’ love, “look no further than Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah,” said Michael Brenner in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Some 1,700 dogs, cats, horses, pigs, and birds live at the sanctuary while awaiting adoption, and visitors are welcome—after making arrangements through bestfriends.org—to build a vacation around helping staff with chores. I brought my father along the second time I made the trip, and it was wonderful watching him “fall under the spell of this enchanting place.” Our first day was spent training “rambunctious puppies” and enjoying the sanctuary’s “awesome vistas” while walking dogs along its dusty trails. My father explored on his own the next day while I got to know some of the inhabitants of “Cat World.” On our final day, we cleaned the dogs’ sleeping quarters before taking a few for another brisk walk. Watching my father bond with “his” dogs, “it struck me that this was the happiest I’d seen him in a long time.”