Daylight Savings Time began on this wet Sunday morning, and we three bicyclists decided to take the long way to the POA Cafe.  Since we already had taken out & put on our waterproof gear – which hadn’t been used much this unseasonably dry, warm winter – we wanted to make it worth our toil so we added on another 3 miles by taking in the Blandena, Michigan, and Rosa Parks bikepaths before backtracking to N. Williams for an introduction to POA.

The recently opened POA is one of those full service outlets that serve alcohol as well as early morning pastries, but is primarily a restaurant catering to younger parents, as they have a great, well-used kids area.   And thus while POA does want parents with young kids to hang out, many of the other homey elements we appreciate – books and/or periodicals for browsing, games, artwork, a variety of seating options, et al. – aren’t there.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed an hour-long lively discussion, during which the rain t0 stopped allowing us to bike home in dry weather.  With M seeing friends from his congregation whose kickstarter campaign brought in more than 10 times their goal – the product being an innovative, pressurized growler – (where else but Portland,) we reflected on how out of touch we, and most of our generation, were with such initiatives; we moved on to our disappointment with the City’s recent affordable housing track record, our admiration for the late Gretchen Kafoury who was an amazing champion, how a select few developers were striving to build innovative infill projects that fit in with the surrounding area, and our pessimism over what will result on the MLK/Alberta site that PDC owns.        4025 N. Williams     http://www.poacafe.com