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Some day this will make a really great McMenamins!

In the NW there are McMenamins.
http://www.mcmenamins.com/
And in Hollywood is CineSpace.
http://www.cine-space.com/

I'm sure there are quite a few others as this is a trend that has growing over the past five years.

Absolutely. The Avalon here in Portland OR charges $2.50 for second- and third-run admission, and I go there all the time. A friend and I saw Batman Begins last night. It's got the second best atmosphere of any cinema in Portland (the Bagdad beats it by selling booze and pizza to eat while watching the show). It's the only theater I can go to by impulse because I'm usually carrying a camera and the more expensive establishments apparently have a terrible fear of someone publishing one of a movie's 200,000 frames on their blog.

The Avalon also has an excellent nickel arcade.

If California is .com, Portland is .org in every way.

From the INCREDIBLY cool FreeGeek ("helping the needy get nerdy") - to the active Portland Linux/Unix Group to the Portland Ruby Brigade that put together the FOSCON mentioned in the OP - Portland has some great geeky stuff going on.

A few months back, I ran the exact same Craigslist help-wanted ad, looking for a great programmer for a well-paying job, in both Portland and Los Angeles Craigslist at the same time. (The job could be done from either Portland or Los Angeles.) The Portland ad was answered by about 30 brilliant programmers, all working on interesting things and seemed to be doing it for love more than money. The Los Angeles ad was answered by a couple clueless numnuts. I love Los Angeles for other reasons, but this was a telling experience.

No sales tax. Great public transportation. More hybrid cars per-capita than anywhere. Kennedy School. Free wireless broadband covers the entire city. A damn good place to live and work. And not a single tourist attraction.

In the Portland area, anyway, several of the McMenamins brewpubs have 802.11, including the excellent Cornelius Pass Roadhouse.

In the Portland area, anyway, several of the McMenamins brewpubs have 802.11, including the excellent Cornelius Pass Roadhouse.

On the west coast, RC is in most major stores and several select "C" stores.

Thankfully you can also have it on tap at McMenamins in Oregon and Washington. A wonderful treat!

Or go to a Theater that serves beer at its own attached bar and only advertises its sister venues. It's cheap, too.

Now here's something interesting: I'm not at all affiliated with McMenamins, I just like the way they do business. Is this an advertisement? An endorsement? A friendly recommendation? Are any of these terms a fully-contained subset of another? Am I wasting my time writing this drivel instead of working? Crap.

Actually, I've taken our 3YO daughter to McMenamins theatres. They all have matinees and are very kid-friendly. The Bagdad (SE Portland) is great for kids...

http://www.mcmenamins.com/index.php?type=theater

> We also download the movies because the theatres charge entirely too much money (anywhere from $8 to $11 from what I have seen) to watch it.

I can't believe people say stuff like this.

a) matinees exist. try to see a movie before 6pm sometime, pay half the price. I know they try to configure their timing such that this is difficult, but if your job is flexible and you want to see a movie after work without paying an arm and a leg, go in earlier.

b) I don't know where you live, but here in Portland, Oregon we have dozens of second-run theaters of high quality, mostly of the McMenamins variety. You can drink hard cider (beer if you're into that shite), eat pizza or stuffed blue-cheese and carmalized onions hamburgers-- I digress. $2 to $4 for a movie. Only have to wait 3 to 4 weeks depending on the movie for it to get there.

I know exactly what you mean. Chuck Palahniuk describes it as a town of fugitives and refugees. It's the kind of place where pedestrians and bicyclists have the right of way, regardless of what the street lights might read, and you don't turn into a street until after everyone has crossed (the opposite of Dallas, at least). It's also the kind of place where an office lunch is just as likely to be held in a bar as in the local sandwich shop. Speaking of bars, the area's known for its microbreweries as well. And there's Powell's Books, of course, the largest bookstore in the world, in case you get bored with walking around...

The city itself's only a couple hundred thousand people. You can see a couple mountains from downtown, depending on where you are and how hazy/misty the weather is. There's great scenery just minutes away in every direction. The west stretch of Highway 26 is also called Sunset Highway, for good reason - it runs out to the coast, which has some excellent beaches (look up Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock on Google images for pretty pictures). The weather is generally milder than Dallas; I didn't have air conditioning in my apartment, and only felt I needed it about 3 weeks out of the year, and I kept a kitchen window partly open almost all winter long. As for rain, when I moved up there the average rainfall was 31 inches, and Dallas' was 33 - it's just that Dallas has a few gully-washers yearly, whereas Portland enjoys mist or drizzle a couple times a week much of the year.

I do have to warn you though, it does (or did) have the highest suicide rate in the U.S, probably due in part to the fact that the sky is often overcast, there's less peak light (unless you mean on mountain peaks) at that lattitude, and so forth. However, I actually prefer those conditions to the ones down here, so I was happy during the winter months.

reply 2:

Nice travel-guide-related website: Lonely Planet

events calendar

Powell's history page [comment regarding my relationship with them through my excellent former employer deleted]
If that's not bookish enough, try Reed. "Reedy" is a fitting name for most of the students.

public gardens If you're at all interested in nice gardens to walk through, the International Rose Test Garden is a great place to walk around.
If you have more time, the Japanese Garden is pretty must the only garden outside Japan considered to be "real" (the Mt. Fuji-stand-in doesn't hurt, either)

At some point, if you drink alcohol, or even just eat, you might end up visiting one of these. They've converted a lot of old schools, etc. into pubs along with the usual locations.

You probably won't want to go out there if you don't have much time on your trip, but see if you can recognize this hotel from the picture. [It's this one, Slashdotters]

The Columbia River Highway runs east of Portland, and includes some nice scenery of Multnomah Falls and the Gorge area.

Out west is Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock.

Oh, tying almost everything in town is the MAX, the light rail service. Gues

In Seattle:
Boeing Museum of Flight: F-18 simulator, Air Force One, B-29, Sopwith Camel, SR-71 cockpit, air traffic control tower exhibit, etc.
Take the Monorail to the Space Needle and Experience Music Project. (Seattle Science Center is redundant if you'll visit the one in L.A.)

Portland:
McMenamins Edgefield: brewery, b&b, Tie-dye golf tournament for Jerry Garcia's birthday, galss blowing, etc.
Saturday Market(also on Sunday), great local arts&crafts&music event.
Powell's books, one of the nation's largest bookstore sprawling over an entire city block, with another store down the street full of technical books.
Authentic Chinese Garden and Japanese Garden and a friendly Zoo with a good concert series.
Indie music from Music Millenium, offbeat movies from Movie Madness, the Church of Elvis, various other wacky things geek create after six months without sunshine.
You might not be able to get into the Pittock Internet Hotel unless you're a TCP or UDP packet.

The post with L.A. suggestions was excellent, at Caltech be sure to visit the gravity wave detector if possible.

In Seattle:
Boeing Museum of Flight: F-18 simulator, Air Force One, B-29, Sopwith Camel, SR-71 cockpit, air traffic control tower exhibit, etc.
Take the Monorail to the Space Needle and Experience Music Project. (Seattle Science Center is redundant if you'll visit the one in L.A.)

Portland:
McMenamins Edgefield: brewery, b&b, Tie-dye golf tournament for Jerry Garcia's birthday, galss blowing, etc.
Saturday Market(also on Sunday), great local arts&crafts&music event.
Powell's books, one of the nation's largest bookstore sprawling over an entire city block, with another store down the street full of technical books.
Authentic Chinese Garden and Japanese Garden and a friendly Zoo with a good concert series.
Indie music from Music Millenium, offbeat movies from Movie Madness, the Church of Elvis, various other wacky things geek create after six months without sunshine.
You might not be able to get into the Pittock Internet Hotel unless you're a TCP or UDP packet.

The post with L.A. suggestions was excellent, at Caltech be sure to visit the gravity wave detector if possible.

Geocaching started in the northwest and still has one of the more dense areas of caches.

Oh, and lots of good beer. And movie theaters that show good movies (rarely anything recent) and serve good beer while watching the movies. Check out McMenamins and the Laurelhurst Theater.

Jason

Not to say that it's not cool. I've been using 144Kbps to stay connected from my favorite brewpub while writing my latest book (the sequel to Llama book). Nice.

Of course, if I could just convince them to install an 802.11 link... that'd be so much nicer. {grin}

but you're not far off. At the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, OR, they have a floor on a suspension system. The whole thing moves under your feet a little. If you could harness it, you could probably generate just enough electricity to pump out the cigarette nimbus clouds that accumulate during concerts.

but you're not far off. At the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, OR, they have a floor on a suspension system. The whole thing moves under your feet a little. If you could harness it, you could probably generate just enough electricity to pump out the cigarette nimbus clouds that accumulate during concerts.

In Portland (Oregon), the McMenamins beer empire has 4 theaters serving beer and food to the over 21 crowd. Most of the movies are only $1 and they conveniently post their schedules on the web.

-Brent

In Portland (Oregon), the McMenamins beer empire has 4 theaters serving beer and food to the over 21 crowd. Most of the movies are only $1 and they conveniently post their schedules on the web.

-Brent