Portland Coffee Hangouts

From their website:  “The Hof” as locals know it wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for a dedicated stream of staff and clientele who believe that a coffee house is more than just a place to buy coffee. It’s also a place to meet people, create community, and think. Just as Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Roosevelt, and Kierkegaard may have had some of their most enlightening conversations at their favorite coffee houses, so we hope our customers will do the same at ours.

​The Clark Family, who also own and operate Goose Hollow Inn next door, opened The Hof in 2001 after the house had been used for years as a hang-out, shop, walk-in cooler, rental apartment, and staff break room, among other things.  It’s name, Fehrenbacher Hof, comes from Sigrid Fehrenbacher, wife of former Mayor Bud Clark who opened Goose Hollow in 1967. The coffee house is decorated with antique toasters, egg beaters, violins, and various other items from her collections as both a violinist and antique dealer.”   The subheading in the website reads “coffee house and study rooms.”

We LOVE institutions like this where proprietors make it part of their mission to provide their community a place to gather.  As new shops open in fancier, more expensive locations with higher prices, and the number of affordable housing opportunities diminishes, the value of gathering spots like the “Hof” skyrockets.

Discussion topics today included a survey of each bicyclist’s favorite Utah destinations and roadways since G and wife D will be visiting next Sept , and queries on what C is planning to do with the 5 acres he bought in the 80s about 15 miles south of Moab.

1225 SW 19th                                               fahrenbacherhof.com

In late Nov. we hit a milestone when our group visited its first coffee shop outside the City limits – Spring Creek Coffee House in Milwaukie – and this week there was another milestone when five of us climbed Terwilliger Hill in challenging weather to revisit Baker and Spice in Hillsdale.  Two of us had visited Baker/Spice via the steep Terwilliger Hill on a dry day three years ago.  This year it might have been foolhardy when the weather called for snow at higher elevations, and rain for the lower ones.  Suffice it to say that we arrived at Baker Spice chilly but dry, and returned to NE Portland wet and quite chilled.

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And the trudge was worth it in that Baker Space is an iconic shop that began baking tasty pastries  at outdoor markets,  then moved into a commercial spot in the strip mall in Hillsdale, and then opened a second spot in the same mall for cakes.  Thus, the coffee cakes and other goodies tasted sublime,  though like most popular bakeries it isn’t ideal for hanging out due there not being enough seats for the demand.   (And it was also worth the effort in that except for some frozen fingers and toes, there were no bike accidents, and no one’s immune system was so weakened that they picked up the flu thereafter.)

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Discussion topics included D’s and B’s adoring tales of their electric bikes; T catching us up on his family’s comings and goings since he’s not been with us for a long while, and our applauding his courage since he’s not been biking that much; H relating his family’s Thanksgiving extravaganza of 33 for dinner, with 2 gatherings of family prior to Thursday’s dinner, and 2 more in the following days;  and what we think about the City Council: who is effective, and who ought to be challenged.

6330 SW Capitol Hill Hwy                                               bakerandspicepdx.com

Our bike group last visited this site in March, 2013 when it was an over-the-top setting for the Rilassi Coffee Shop: over the top because its style was reminiscent of Italian grandeur with a full scale painting on the ceiling of the entryway which also featured a fountain and sizable chandelier led to an ornate stairway.  Our guess was that this space was originally designed for an upscale restaurant that never came to be.

In this iteration the fountain is gone but the other embellishments remain, and while the downstairs feels pedestrian, the upstairs because of its seclusion overlooking the bistro’s downstairs makes us feel a bit special.

Discussion topics today included the emergency training (NET) that two of our bicylists just took; how the electric bikes that two of today’s four now ride are game-changers for them;  how impressive the Swing Left presentation was at the recent Indivisible-allied One Small Thing meeting; and what’s now a common topic – current ailments – with today’s foci being cataracts and an esophagus blockage.

3580 River Parkway                                        http://www.riverparkwaybistro.com

As we continue our search for new places to bike to for our Sunday morning discussions, we find ourselves – after visiting 180 different locations – having to stretch beyond traditional coffee shops, and that’s the case with the PDX Exchange which is attached to the new Porter Hotel on SW 2nd and Jefferson.    We believe it meets our base criteria in that here we order at a counter rather than ordering with a waiter or waitress, and we have the access to sip/eat/discuss within the hotel lobby where there are a couple of interesting sections that are comfortable for hanging out.  Also, even though the Exchange has an all day/night menu, its morning house-made pastries, coffee and teas are all quite good.  (Full disclosure: we learned today that the Exchange is owned by the Hilton conglomerate, and definitely not locally owned.)

Today’s hot topic was the “whistleblower” who issued the complaint re our president’s phone call to Ukraine’s president while withholding congressionally approved financial aid.  We wondered whether this could this be the first stone in an upcoming national controversy like Daniel Ellsberg’s circulation of the Pentagon Papers?  And might this start peeling Republican support away from the President?  Democrat candidate-wise, we queried if there aren’t too many candidates older than us and isn’t it time for a new generation of candidates to have the spotlight??   If so, then hopefully Biden or Bernie should bow out soon.  And climate change protest-wise, there’s a fascinating march occurring today at 11 where the immigrant and environmental communities in butterfly costumes are starting at opposite ends of the Hawthorne Bridge and meeting in the center.  

1355 SW 2nd Ave.