I've been back from Portland!

So I went and met Scott and for some stupid reason we didn't get any pictures together! We could be lying about having met. No one will ever believe anything I say again!
We had a couple of hours until check-in time at the hotel, so we got lunch. I really wanted a drink, having had one while watching "The Prestige" on the train, but I decided to hold off since I planned to drink a lot later. We went to a cafe creativley named "John's." The best section of the menu was the Dessert. It read:

Dessert
Ice cream sandwich....$1.00
That was it. We wondered if they unwrapped it for you or put it on a plate or anything. The waitress, an older woman with a Russian(?)accent, was clearly one of the owners. She was a weird sort of friendly and bitchy at the same time. We shot the shit for a while there.
We went to Reading Frenzy, an honest to goodness zine store. A lot of them were Portland-centric, but that's to be expected. I picked up a handful of painfully indie comics, as well as the first two issues of Optic Nerve. I really should have gotten more. A lot more. I read ALL of them on the train ride home.
We also went to a monstorous bookstore that had a condom despenser in the men's room. I suppose it makes sense that whoever runs that place is well-informed. This bathroom was also on the same level as the gay books. hmmm....

This is Scott in the graphic novel section wich was, of course, in the last section of the place we looked. It was in the gorram coffe shop. My stupid camera phone was on the small setting :(

After that we went out to get some grub as well as find some gay bars. There were supposed to be a few all in the same area butI'll be damned if we only saw two or three. One was what seemed to be a leather bar and we opted not to go to that one. The one bar/restaurant we did go to was suprisingly unfriendly. There were a lot of middle aged men at the bar all involved in their own conversations, wich is totally fine, but it was the servers that gave us the cold welcome. It seemed as though they couldn't get rid of us fast enough. There were several attempts to clear our plates well before we ewre finished eating, and when we were done, the waitress says "I assume you want the check." Well, yeah, after the watery drinks and lack of warmth, I think we were ready to go. I did smoke a cigarette in there, missing the few months in Seattle where I could actually do that in a bar, but it was bittersweet. The friendliest person there was the old guy who tried to sell us roses. Scott tried to take comfort in the fact that he thought we were handsome, turning a deaf ear to my explanation that he just wanted to sell us something.

We walked around for a bit before deciding on a decidedly-not-gay bar. That place was way better. The waitress was super friendly, the drinks were stiff, and the music was better, if not a little too loud. We sat there for two or three hours getting to know each other outside of the ones and zeroes that had represented us until that day. I feel like I know Danielle, Scott's Jew-Hag, personally already. Scott even managed to get a picture of me smiling. Rare, indeed.
Then it was back to the hotel, but not before stopping by 7-11 for more beer. Thank god we had a smoking room. Scott and I talked a long time about comics. I've found a few people latley that I can finally talk comics with, but I always know more than them. Not in this case. Scott has been around the industry for a while and has been reading a lot longer than I have, so if there were a triva contest, he'd pretty much kill me. I think I held my own pretty well, though.
So, Portland is really nice but I didn't see much of a night life. Yeah, it was a Thursday and really cold, but it's also a big city. I would expect more. Oh, yeah, when we were looking for the bookstores, there was a really helpful, femmy guy who told us how to get there. That was his job, he works for the city. He looked kinda like a meter maid.