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a sneak peek at my new Stockholm guidebook

Alert readers (hi Karl!) may already know that I have a new guidebook out -- well, a few of them, actually, but the subject of today's post is Stockholm Pocket Precincts, a very cute and practical guide to Stockholm's neighborhoods.

Is it not adorable?

This is the first book I've written in a while that was mine from scratch, rather than an update of an existing work. So I used it as an excuse to talk about ALL the good stuff: 

• the little cafe in the back corner of the underground food market where I used to go eat fish stew with Mormor (and still go with Mom and Dad whenever possible); 

Yes, you do want the blob of aioli on top

• my favorite art museum, where I go to visit old friends I first met through my grandfather; 

Öyvind Fahlström is my friend

• all the good beer halls (obviously) but more importantly, the best pinball bar in town;
• the only place to get these incredible little almond-cardamom cake-bomb things in Gamla Stan;
• a veggie restaurant with the world's most addictive dark-brown bread (free! all you want);
• the stylishly cylindrical library;
• a handful of other museums I really like, including Ethnographic and Mediterranean;
• even shopping!

Plus: day trips to the archipelago (tiny red cabins!), the royal palace (by boat!) and Uppsala (for SCIENCE!), and all the usual travel tips (for example, how to pay for public toilets in a city that doesn't use cash -- although I'm still kinda figuring that one out tbh). 

You can get an idea of what the book is like in this Newsweek article, which is also the buried lede of this glob post.

And if you like that, check out the book at indie bookstores or online (or, if you're in Portland, talk me into hand-delivering a signed copy).

Actual Stockholm travel is recommended but not required for purchase. 

:) 

deadlining

Thoughts I have when I'm on deadline, pretty much every time:

• this seems like a good day to organize my bookmarks
• and my bookshelves
• I deserve to watch that new movie - no ALL the new movies
• definitely need to redesign my resume
• baseboards are looking awfully dusty aren't they
• let's put 27 books on hold at the library for when we're done
• Buffy/Alias marathon?
• I should work out
• spring clean! everything!
• plan trip to ??
• maybe I should go back to school
• does napping help you lose weight
• is crying healthy
• what IS the best way to pack a backpack?
• always wanted to learn swahili
• I need to take more online tests to reveal my best career path 
• hey do you remember that scene in that one movie - wait it's probably on youtube
• ... 
• crossword puzzles are broccoli for the mind
• mmm, broccoli
• I wonder what time it is right now in the main office
• these socks are itchy
• how do you make yogurt
• HIDE, RUN AWAY THEY'LL NEVER FIND YOU

disappearing dives

If you know Portland, you know it loves its dive bars. I mean, this is the city that revived PBR. We like to drink cheap. But these days the really divey bars – the places you'd hesitate to recommend to out-of-town visitors – are rapidly disappearing. (Anyone remember the Paragon? It came up in conversation the other night. I don't mean the one in the Pearl. I mean the one that had a cage at the front door and a guy who had to buzz you in, the one that smelled like burning plastic inside. "Dive" doesn't really cover it.) 

Anyway. One of the best (worst? cheapest? most enduring?) was Hanigan’s, universally known as the ‘Vern (broken T and A on the "Tavern" sign). It was the kind of place where you could get a pitcher of beer for $4, where your friend's band could definitely play a show, where you’d risk digestive purgatory for the 25-cent tacos even though you would not willingly touch the floor, the tabletop, or anything in the bathroom. 

It was always too bright and smelled terrible. It had a real jukebox (immortalized on a “Best of the Vern” compilation CD). In short, it was perfect. Then it died. 

But the Vern has now risen like a phoenix from a birdbath. Its new owners have already remade a bunch of other bars in town - the Elvis Room, Sandy Hut, Lay Low, Alibi. They have a distinctive but easily replicated style built around relics leftover from doomed Portland bars (such as the great Club 21, which they ran until it was demolished to make room for condos, and whose iconic neon “STEAKS For Your Enjoyment” sign now hangs inside the Vern). Think velvet naked-lady paintings, vintage lamps and kitschy beer signs, red leather booths and low lighting. Add pinball, burgers and Olympia tallboys, and voila: an aesthetically pleasing Portland dive bar whose carpet doesn’t gross anybody out.

But are these reimagined places a little too ... ? If you woke up suddenly inside the new Vern’s back room, you might easily think you were in the Lay Low or the Hut: There will be at least one guy with a big beard and trucker hat at the bar; he’s probably a craft brewer, or he makes bicycles. The jukebox is infinite. The place doesn’t smell. It doesn’t smell! The bathroom is decorated with hologram cat pictures, and the door sticks, but you’re not afraid to go in (for health reasons).

The new Vern is totally fine. By any objective measure, it’s probably better than the old Vern. But it’s hard not to think something was lost in the transition.

(Then again, it was probably something icky.)

secrets of guidebooking, revealed

Those of us who write guidebooks for a living like to make a big deal about how it's totally a real job and we're not just getting paid to bum around checking out cool stuff on some fat company's dime. It's work, you guys! We are working.

Real talk, though: guidebook writing is not rocket surgery. Mostly it's a lot of wandering around with a notebook and a cellphone, looking like a dork because you spend way more than a normal amount of time on a sidewalk in front of a storefront, not really going anywhere, seeming completely lost.

(Or running on fumes in search of a trailhead at the end of a road that appears on no maps, unless it's that one you passed a few miles back and ignored because there's no way anyone could possibly drive anything but a tank down that road....) 

It's not hard. But it is slow work, and it doesn't pay much, so in order for it to be worth doing, you have to make it fun. This is easier to do if you happen to get a thrill from discovering and writing down things like 

• bus schedules 
• train schedules
• ferry routes
• average menu prices
• opening hours
• size/number of potholes in access road
• for how many miles?
• ticket prices, entry fees
• number of cougar attacks last year
• currency exchange rates
• phone numbers
• what is that flower
• do ticks around here carry Lyme disease 
• asking for a friend
• rules about border crossings
• immunization and customs requirements
• GPS coordinates in three formats
• backcountry permit requirements
• hotel room prices that vary by day of week/mood of receptionist
• rental car policies esp re damage caused by potholes

Bonus points if you enjoy squeezing all this information into a small imaginary box with a strict wordcount. 

Then again, you also get to go on scenic hikes, ride weird bus routes, hang out in bars, and sometimes eat delicious food (or at least take photos of it). Every day is different.

Anyway, here are a few scenes from the fun parts of putting together the brand-new, updated edition of my latest guidebook, Walking Portland: 

Portland' skyline has changed a bit since I first started writing about it. This photo shows an Imperial Star Destroyer parked illegally on the east end of the Burnside Bridge, next to a goofy little office building called the Fair-Haired Dumbbell, which I've tried to hate but reluctantly kind of adore.

Kay's Bar in Sellwood - an old favorite, with the best lamps and pretty good nachos.

Gena Rowlands hangs out near the pinball machines at Holman's on 28th Ave - I visit her a lot, even though this corner of the bar is right next to the bathrooms and smells terrible

I don't care what you say, these stupid little electric scooter things are super fun.

Sometimes, in Portland, you go to a bar just to play a little pinball and the place is full of youngsters in pajamas with little backpacks on, for no apparent reason

Pinball is a contact sport and can be dangerous

The typical Portland diet includes a wide variety of foods 

If you're in Portland you should try to get out on the water (just don't touch it) (the Willamette River is poison)

The best chicken salad: at Basilisk, in the Zipper building, a hipster food court on NE Sandy Blvd

Olympia Provisions - preserved meats designed for world-class gold-medal athletes.
(Not true. But they are delicious.)

Spider Jerusalem hangs out in front of the comics library at Reed College

City of Roses. (Fact.)

Your author with a few examples of what's been taking so long.

just keep walking

Walking is a great way to think. Lots of important thinkers have written about it, from Emerson
and Thoreau to Nietzsche to Kierkegaard – who supposedly said, “If one just keeps on walking, everything will be alright.” (Seems worth a try.)

Walking and writing go well together, too – just look at Wordsworth, or for something a little more contemporary, Rebecca Solnit (who wrote the wonderful Wanderlust: A History of Walking [2012]). 

Anyway, it beats sitting at your desk and struggling to dredge up something useful to say. Writing, even travel writing, involves a surprising amount of sitting at a desk. When I'm on a deadline, I dream up excuses all morning, little errands that surely need doing: groceries to pick up, packages to mail, something on hold (or more likely, overdue) at the library.

So if there’s one thing I hope for the new edition of Walking Portland, it’s that it gives readers 30-odd new excuses to go outside and take a walk.



Although the book works just fine as a travel guide for visitors to Portland, it's really less about getting around than it is about slowing down and seeing the city differently.

Portland is growing and changing at breakneck speed. It’s hard to keep up, even for someone like me, whose job is to keep up. Things move fast: apartments spring up on the tombs of old dive bars; restaurants open to great fanfare, then close again before I have a chance to eat there; entire streets are rerouted or redesigned.

The pace of growth in formerly sleepy little Stumptown is exciting, but for some of us it's also a little alarming. I find that walking is a nice way to slow it all down, take stock of what's new, and absorb the changes at street level. (I still miss a lot, and I'm constantly amazed at new buildings and businesses popping up where just yesterday I could swear there was nothing.)



Most of the walks in the book are built for sauntering aimlessly through urban areas with a high potential for distraction and discovery. (A few are more remote, incorporating wide-open meadows, riverside paths or leafy trails through the woods.) They’re easy to customize: you can mix several walks together, do half one day and half the next, get tired and hop a bus, or even just “walk” vicariously while sitting in a pub, reading the book.

I support that approach.

As I mentioned in the first edition – and it’s still true – some of the best things in Walking Portland are gone: The old steakhouse with the deep red leather booths. The creek that disappears. The rock club that turned into a pawn shop. The building shaped like a shoe.

Some of the walks are ghost walks now – so much of what they pass is lost. But there’s still a lot in Portland waiting to be found.

The new edition includes three brand-new walks and one bonus walk, as well as all new photos and updated descriptions of the original 30 routes. Ideally, it should work like any good guide: point you toward a neighborhood and give you a general sense of its character, then turn you loose. After all, it’s much more fun to discover interesting things on your own. (But do let me know in the comments if you find things you're excited about sharing!)

Portland...oh no

New edition of Walking Portland out Tuesday!

Coming SOON! A brand-spanking-new edition of my guide to exploring my rapidly changing but eternally weird hometown, Portland, Oregon:

Walking Portland: 33 Tours of Stumptown's Funky Neighborhoods, Historic Landmarks, Park Trails, Farmers Markets and Brewpubs

It's due to publish February 5, just in time to seriously test your devotion to walking in the rain. But why wait? You can pre-order it now from Powell's, Annie Bloom's, Broadway Books, or whichever indie bookseller is your favorite.