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On this overcast summer morning two bikers rode to N. Portland to revisit Madrona Hill Cafe.  Despite its being spiffied up for 5 years or more, today’s riders remember when its seating options were few, and its customer service wanting.  Today it continues to embrace and offer assets that make it a community magnet:  Displaying local artwork, baking on-site home-made pastries, a variety of seating options, and natural light from above-avergage-sized windows, amongst them.

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Discussion topics included M’s new offer to purchase bare land – in order for wife J and he to build a new home in which they could age in place -after losing out on his bid to buy a house in a co-housing community.  In this incestuous small-city world of Portland, H knew of the woman who had outbid M, knew her ex-partner and her ex-partner’s former spouse, and drew on a napkin their extended modern family tree.  Then H, fresh off two high school graduations of his niece and nephew, described the differences between Camas’s with 500 graduates vs PCC’s special HS programs with 70 graduates:  essentially each Camas grad received 4 seconds of limelight in their assembly line-style, while PCC was able to offer 8 seconds between each graduate. 

5937 N. Greeley                  madronahillcafe.com