sweet pete!

my friend kjirsten and i went to see pete yorn over at the wonder ballroom sunday night.

it was a great show and ben kweller, the opener was amazing.

the thing that i love about the wonder ballroom is that you can easily get up front and personal at the shows there. i highly recommend this venue.

and don't worry lorenzo, you're way hotter than pete...and that's saying a lot!

missing the movie house

the former movie house theater

the very first film i saw in portland was il postino at the movie house over on sw taylor. sadly, the movie house is no longer open as a theater. if you ever had the opportunity to see a film at the movie house i'm sure you will understand why i wax poetic about it. it was such a beautiful theater and it really makes me sad that we don't get to enjoy it any longer.

sitting in the movie house, watching il postino was so magical. the theater in the movie actually looked like the movie house and i understood at that time that i would remember that experience for the rest of my life. a few years later, i was lucky enough to watch the re-release of my all time favorite movie, le grand bleu (the big blue). and shortly after this, the movie house closed.

i think i want to start a movement to bring the movie house back. isn't it just so cute? it even looks like a little italian cinema...sigh.

if you haven't seen il postino or the big blue, check them out. two classics in my opinion.

shanghai'd in paris

shanghai tunnel

a few years ago when i was in paris, i was staying in montmartre for the last two days of my trip before coming back home to portland. my last night, i walked around the neighborhood and at the very top of montmartre popped into this little irish pub to have a beer and write some things down. i sat there, writing for a few hours and when i got up to pay, the bartender struck up a conversation with me and wanted to know where i was from. he was a really sweet kid from scotland who had recently moved to paris and had begun bartending while going to school. well, when i told him i was from portland, his face lit up and he asked me if i had ever been to the shanghai tunnel. i laughed and said yes i had been to the shanghai tunnel many times as it was in the neighborhood where i worked. he just thought that was so cool that i been there and he said to me that he had wanted to come to portland just to go to the shanghai. how funny was it that there i was in paris, on montmartre and the person i had met wanted to visit the shanghai in portland. it turns out that he had recently watched the insomniac episode that featured portland. i wonder if he ever made it here?

if you have never been to the shanghai, check it out. although i don't make it there very often any more, it's still one of my favorite bars.
it's located at 211 sw ankeny 503.220.4001. http://www.shanghaitunnel.com/

if you don't live in portland and would like to check out the shanghai, there is a movie called bigger than the sky that features great interior shots of the shanghai, as it's the bar the characters frequent. it's a very sweet, simple little film but you can see a lot of portland in it.