Art Rides a Magic Carpet outside the Bagdad Theatre in Funky Portland, Oregon
Hawthorne is one of the city’s hippest neighborhoods. The Trail Blazer city is not without its problems, but chill street corners see dreamy landscape paintings and punk rock. Black clothes are in.
(All photos by David Scott)
Smoothie central: One of Portland’s trendiest districts, Hawthorne teams with diverse cuisine and chic cafés, as in a college town. The Bagdad theatre, which doubles as a pub, has screened movies since the silver-screen days of 1927 when the same neon marquee lit up S.E. 37th Avenue.
Julian Kreusser and Mae McKee-Kreusser, brother and sister, are looking for a drummer to round out “The Skinned Knees,” their punk-rock band.
His baby-face mustache and her teen cool single the siblings out.
“I really like ‘Thundercat’ “ says high schooler Mae McKee-Kruesser, 15, referencing muses. “He’s an awesome songwriter.”
She and big brother Julian, 20, are fresh off an afternoon punk-rock gig outside the vintage Bagdad theatre, a core landmark in Portland’s hip Hawthorn district. A potpourri of bookstores, nouveau bohemian cafés and street art dots 37th Avenue, an hour’s walk from downtown Portland, where light-rail trains rumble past homeless encampments at rush hour. A man in meditation is one downtown stop’s lone commuter in wait.
No stress: A Monday morning commuter meditates in wait for a downtown Portland light-rail train.
Homeless encampments dot the northeast edge of downtown Portland, in contrast to Hawthorne’s more upwardly mobile residents who live in vintage houses.
Across the Willamette River in Hawthorne, the art scene is warming to mid-80s sun and guitar riffs. In the time it takes to polish off a smoothie, the precocious Kruessers inch toward the spirit of “Almost Famous,” Cameron Crowe’s movie on innocence versus rock-and-roll glam.
“The Skinned Knees,” as the Kreusser show is called, chose the Bagdad area for its chill scene.
“It gives me good vibes,” says lead vocalist Julian Kreusser of the Hawthorne corner. “It seemed like the type of crowd that would listen to our music.”
His sister does bass guitar and back-up vocals, with each writing music.
“We’re looking for a drummer,” the brother says.
For the time being, who needs CBGB in the East Village?
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Red Van Grow, 27, brushes dreamy landscapes below the Bagdad marquee. After visiting a relative in Portland years ago, the former resident of La Grande, Ore., had an epiphany: “If I continue to do art, I’ll do just fine.”
The minute the Kreussers vacate their street-median post, another artist fills the void.
Twenty-seven-year-old Red Van Grow is a painter who grew up in La Grande, Ore.
“I really like your tattoo,” he says to a guy strolling by in a sleeveless T-shirt. “How you doing? You decide the price.”
It works: The man with the cockatoo tattoo stops in his tracks.
“Would $30 be OK?” offers the prospective customer.
On cue, Van Grow closes the sale: “Do you mind if I sign it?”
New York City is full of artists who make as much as tormented Vincent Van Gogh—zip.
Based on five minutes with the bearded redhead who resembles the post-impressionist painter and even has a Dutch surname, marketing doesn’t seem to present a problem.
Do you believe in time-traveling doppelgängers?
“Thank you for giving art a home” says Van Grow after closing a $30 sale.
Ca-ching: Thirty dollars richer, Van Grow snaps a photo of the painting just sold.
“I make a living on my art,” says Van Grow, who creates colorful landscapes on the spot. “You’re looking at a dreamland where there are no dark shadows, only light shadows. Therefore, no frowns.”
Across the street from the Bagdad is a reader’s paradise linked to one of the biggest bookstores in the world, Powell’s. Its gargantuan mother store straddles the fringes between downtown Portland and the pricey Pearl District.
Along Hawthorne Avenue are a few of the folks who buy psychedelic art and prick their ears to Sid Vicious chords. If it weren’t for the tall iced coffees in hands, newcomers to Portland might swear they just saw a character out of “Drugstore Cowboy,” Gus Van Sant’s depiction of 1970s Portland, where black clothing is à la mode.
Steps from the Hawthorne Avenue Powell’s is a woman in black.
More noir on a sweltering afternoon
The original downtown Powell’s, among the biggest bookstores in the world, takes up an entire city block, dwarfing the Strand of New York City.
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