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CARTopia: Portland’s Food Cart Revolution

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CartopiaIn a post at the indispensable Portland Food Carts, dieselboi has announced the publication of Cartopia: Portland’s Food Cart Revolution, a book by Kelley Roy and Kelly Rodgers. He writes:

The book looks into the history or carts, the demographics, the owner’s stories and yes, the food. I contributed along with Paul Gerald from Breakfast in Bridgetown, Carol Mayer Reed and Michael Reed from Mayer/Reed, Kelly and Kelley, and Andrew Burdick, our awesome photographer. I enjoyed taking the extra time to interview cart owners and delve further into the background as to why they opened a cart and the trials and tribulations throughout the years. There are some wonderful stories out there in food cart land.

The book, available in October, can be pre-ordered at PortlandFoodCartsbook.com, where you can also read excerpts from the book.

Dave Goes on a Low-Car Diet

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Zipcar Low-Car DietWhen I filled out the survey applying for a spot in the 2010 Portland Zipcar Low-Car Diet, I didn’t expect I would be accepted. For one thing, I’m already a Zipcar member (heck, I was a Flexcar member).

Oh yeah, and I’ve been car free since 2003!

I signed up in anticipation of maybe, just maybe, convincing my new wife Heather to join me on the Low-Car Diet. Alas, she had little interest in filling out the survey.

But the good news is she has promised to try a Low-Car Diet too this month, even though her efforts will not be officially Zipcar sanctioned. Fortunately the schwag bag Zipcar gave me has enough goodies for two!

Portland Zipcar 2010 Low-Car Diet Kickoff EventYou may be wondering at this point what the Low-Car Diet entails? Annually Zipcar issues a challenge: for 30 days, put down your keys, dust off your bike, trike or roller skates and find out what the Zipcar way of life is all about. In each Zipcar city a group of volunteers is selected to participate.

The Portland kickoff event took place yesterday at Pioneer Courthouse Square. The participants gathered around a podium while representatives of Zipcar, Trimet, and Multnomah County gave brief speeches. Then the Ceremony of the Keys took place. As our names were called, each of us stepped forward, dropped our car key into the Zipcar-branded fish bowl on the table in front of the podium, stepped to the side, and received our bag of schwag.

For the next 30 days we promise to go as car free as possible!

For updates on our efforts, visit the Zipcar Low-Car Diet website, and follow the Twitter hashtag #lowcardiet. And I may blog more here – stay tuned!

Dave Knows Turns 3!

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3rd Birthday at Farrell'sThree years ago today this blog was born. Over 1024 posts and 1871 comments later, there’s no end in sight – seems like there’s something interesting going on all the time in Portland, and I have yet to run out of opinions!

Fittingly, the first post was about beer. Later that first week I blogged about the Timbers for the first time. As long time readers know these are recurring themes at Dave Knows Portland.

In the blog’s inaugural year, I averaged 4.9 posts per week. Last year I got that to 5.1, and now it’s up to 6.5. The last few months I’ve averaged close to two posts a day. Visitor traffic is up too, of course, but the frequency of posts is the most interesting statistic to me personally. It’s an indicator of how much I enjoy researching, writing, sharing, and interacting with readers. This blog provides plenty of opportunity for all of these.

So on that note I want to thank you for reading, commenting, and linking – this blog would be rather pointless without you!

Photographed in Portland: Locals vs Tourists

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Photographer Eric Fischer has assembled maps of over a hundred world cities, including Portland, Oregon, showing locations geotagged by locals and tourists on Flickr and Picasa.

Here’s what Portland looks like, from the set Locals and Tourists:

Portland Tourists and Locals

Blue points on the map are pictures taken by locals (people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range of a month or more).

Red points are pictures taken by tourists (people who seem to be a local of a different city and who took pictures in this city for less than a month).

Yellow points are pictures where it can’t be determined whether or not the photographer was a tourist (because they haven’t taken pictures anywhere for over a month). They are probably tourists but might just not post many pictures at all.

Check out the Geotaggers’ World Atlas map of Portland too, for undifferentiated geotagged locations.

Via Planetizen, via The Map Room