Two Cool Portland Hangouts for Geeks and Movie Buffs
My final hours here in Portland, Oregon, and nobody—to my knowledge—emailed me asking to meet up. Oh well, next time, more lead time.
Two required spots to check out if you're a geek and movie buff: The Mission Theater and Pub, which is, like it says, half theatre and half pub, and Backspace, which is a big art gallery slash gaming lounge slash Internet cafe. The downstairs are regular chairs and tables, and the upstairs are rows of seats with a long, thin table for each row. The atmosphere is awesome, like something out of the late seventies, and on the wall they show contemporary movies while having nights of showing episodes from cult TV shows and even had a party to show the Presidential debates. I saw Shaun of the Dead, which was absolutely hilarious, but which I will have to see again, because I could not understand parts of the dialogue. Nothing to do with the venue, and everything to do with the thick British accents of some of the actors. It's worth seeing twice, though, because I hear there are sight gags that devoted fans catch after repeated viewings.
Backspace was cool, and they were having a Halo 2 tournament as we (my friend slash Portland tour guide and myself) entered. The gamers were very heavily geeky, and we only stayed for a little while, but it's a big open space where people can hang out, look at weird art installations, check their email and play classic video games. (One guy handed his game of Tron over to me because he was being called into his Halo 2 game. He was on his last life in Tron, so my game ended pretty quickly.) There were no Macs in the house, which I noticed only because as of two weeks agom, I'm the proud owner of a 15-inch PowerBook.
No photos of either spot, and few photos of the trip in general. I tried to spend it with my friends rather than work (oops) or take photos or read the items in my aggregator, the number of which was up to 400 just an hour ago (now down to 250).