I go downtown to Backspace a lot, as often as possible. Aside from riding around on the Streetcar with the ole’ trusty laptop out Backspace is probably one of my top favorites for coding away. Good coffee, good donuts and other such foods, vegetarian stuff and some other grub – that might not be vegetarian and of course probably the most awesome environment in the city.
In addition to that next door is Ford’s on Fifth, which is definitely not vegetarian focused, that has absolutely rocking steak sandwich and various food that has an east coast feel to it. In addition to that, the prices are super low, but the food is top notch. Around the other corner, one of the best places to take a break, is Ground Kontrol. Basically this is probably the kewlest block in Portland for geeks, coders, and hacker types. It just breeds outside of the box thinking and there are always conversations to be had.
The wireless at these places is easily accessible and usually pretty reliable. Even with the dozen or so World of Warcraft playing junkies online non-stop the bandwidth is decent. So if you live in Portland, you have a penchant for not sitting around your house to code, hack, crack, or WOW, and you haven’t checked out this block in downtown, I’d advise to do so ASAP. It rocks… and in about a year and a half it will by far be the most awesome MAX stop in downtown. Right out front the Yellow and Green lines will be stopping, which will probably boost (or possibly detract) the coolness factor of these establishments. I’m betting, since they have a cool city gritty feel, the stop will only increase the awesomeness.
Anyway, back to whacking this Facade Pattern back under control, it seems to be tossing me errors now that should be being logged only at this time.
Geez, everytime I read your blog, Portland sounds even more kick ass everytime.
Oh, it is. 🙂 I’ve been working on more of these literal, "what I do here" entries just for fun. Portland is truly amazing.