We had dinner at Hawthorne Fish House in Portland, Oregon on Thursday, July 12, 2012. We traveled to Portland that afternoon to attend the annual convention or “con” of the National Puzzlers League (NPL). It was called “Orecon.” We actually hadn’t attended an NPL con since attending Laconic at the Omni Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles in July 2005. We had fun and learned right away that puzzlers don’t go by their given names but by noms, often with special meaning to them. At that con we met some puzzlers from the L.A. area who organized puzzle parties every other month. Some of them would create word and trivia puzzles and games and have the rest of us do them and often compete against each other. My wife had created some of the group games. We attended most of the puzzle parties for the next six years and got to know some of the puzzlers well. We attend plays in which one of them acted and later wrote (see earlier reviews of Rehearsal for Murder, Richard III, and Transfigured Night). We attended the funeral of Barry Tunick (nom: Panache) who was also the constructor of the L.A. Times crossword puzzles. He had earlier given us the books The Dictionary of American Literature and The Dictionary of English Literature (see earlier reviews). Another L.A. puzzler is Charlotte Cremin, a.k.a. Charts. Her late husband, Lawrence, was an American education historian who wrote the book Popular Education and Its Discontents and a comprehensive trilogy covering 1776 to the present (1980s to him).
The NPL Orecon was to be held at the Portland Doubletree Hotel that’s on the east side of the Willamette River. Downtown Portland, the Pearl District, Portland State University, Powell’s City of Books flagship store, McCall Park, and many other major sites in Portland are on the west side of the Willamette River. We had spent some time there, most recently in September 2006 when we flew up for my 10-year college reunion at Willamette U. We stayed at the Mark Spencer Hotel, had meals at Mother’s, Peanut Butter and Ellie’s, and Superdog, visited Powell’s, the Pearl District, and the Adidas store, and rode the MAX light rail and the free streetcar. That was my wife’s second time in Portland. The first was when we visited my friends from college in 1999. We stayed with some of them east of the river. It was probably the first time I spent time on that side. I had been to Portland many times when I attended Willamette. I had visited the zoo, a large theatre where I saw Les Miserables, the outdoor Saturday market, a fencing studio, the Clackamas mall, and other places. But something I had never done before our trip to Orecon was drive in Portland.
Orecon actually lasted for four days, planned for the participants to stay at the Doubletree, and charged a fee that covered all meals. But we couldn’t afford all that. We decided to stay at a less expensive motel and crash the first night of the con, similar to what we did at Laconic seven years earlier. My wife did a lot of research online. She found a trendy but expensive motel, The Jupiter, with a restaurant/lounge, Doug Fir, where bands and musicians performed. Just kitty-corner from the Jupiter was a less expensive hotel, the Eastside Lodge that looked like a good option for us. My wife also looked up restaurants in the area and found many including Hawthorne Fish House, Pok Pok, Screen Door (Southern food), Ate-Oh-Ate, Mee Sen, Nick’s Famous Coney Island, Hotlips Pizza, Bunk Sandwiches, and Sizzle Pie. In mid to late June we made reservations at the Eastside Lodge through booking.com for $75 per night. We also started thinking about our meal schedule and when we planned to drive down and back. It would be a busy time because we planned to travel to Juneau, AK for the Fourth of July and my high school reunion the week before (see earlier blog).
On Thursday, July 12 we left Tacoma at 1:20 p.m. We hit a little bit of traffic in Lakewood, WA. At 2:15 we crossed the Skookumchuck River and were in Centralia, WA in Lewis County. Earlier my wife had learned that “skookum” means strong. Other counties we drove through included Cowlitz and Clark. So Washington has both a Lewis County and a Clark County. Other rivers we crossed or drove by included the Newaukum, Cowlitz, Toutle, Coweeman, and Kalama. Signs mentioned the towns of Onalaska, Kelso, Longview, Long Beach, and Woodland. At one point we saw a green hill with about half the trees not there. We also saw a tall white mountain with a wide flat-looking top. We believe that this was the volcano Mt. St. Helens. The weather was very nice and we enjoyed driving the I-5 south in Washington state during the day for the first time. When we drove up from California on New Year’s Day it was dark by the time we reached Washington. There were many green wooded areas, rivers, small towns, and even some cows.
At 3:38 p.m. we had driven through Vancouver, WA and crossed the Columbia River into Portland, OR. Not very long after crossing the bridge we exited the I-5, took a cloverleaf-like interchange, and got on highway 99. The street was also known as Martin Luther King in Portland. Early on there were signs for the Portland airport that’s further to the east. There was a fair amount of traffic on MLK. We passed the convention center. The street became one-way going south and consisted of 3-4 lanes. We crossed Multnomah, the street on which the Doubletree Hotel resides. We also crossed highway (freeway) 30 and turned left on East Burnside, a one-way street going east. We drove a couple of blocks, spotted the Jupiter Hotel on our right and the Eastside Lodge on our left. There was another, smaller building on the corner of 9th and Burnside. I think the sign said it was the Galaxy Lounge. It looked like it was closed. We got a bit confused in the separated parking lots for the two buildings but soon figured it out. The lot for the Eastside Lodge had angled spaces whose direction didn’t clearly indicate whether the lot was a one-way drive. We just drove the way we needed.
After we parked we entered the door closest to Burnside that opened to the front desk. The clerk was very friendly, asking where we came from and why we were in Portland. He said I looked like a philosophy or math professor. He gave us our key cards to our room, 214. We climbed the stairs to the second floor. Later we found the elevator further down the hall from our room. The motel had a swimming pool on the ground floor that was covered with boards and used as a patio. My wife had read that the motel used to be a Travelodge. Our room smelled a bit like a chlorinated cleaner but otherwise it was adequate with a king-size bed, microwave, small refrigerator, cathode ray tube TV, and air conditioner with the switch behind the TV. The window looked out onto Couch Street, a one-way street going west. I called to ask for more pillows and the front desk clerk said I had to come down and get them since he was the only one in. The room had a small closet, one luggage rack, a desk and a side table.
After unpacking we decided to drive to the place we picked out for dinner. We took Burnside east and at one point it became 2-way. The MapQuest directions said to take 39th/Cesar E. Chavez to get to Hawthorne. But we wanted to do some recon for places we planned to visit the next day. We tried taking 30th but it wasn’t such a major street and we ended up navigating several side streets including one that ended at Belmont. We noticed signs painted on road indicating a bike route and during our drives in Portland we shared the road with more than a few bicyclists. We finally reached Hawthorne and were able to find the places that we would visit the next day. Hawthorn Street was a bit like Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles or 6th Avenue in Tacoma with many shops and just a block from residential streets. We crossed 39th/Cesar E. Chavez and found our destination on our left. We turned left onto a side street just past it. The sign at the parking lot behind it said No Parking for restaurant. But we found some space on the side street. I think the sign said 2-hour parking. It was a short walk to our destination, Hawthorne Fish House.
Signs on the door to Hawthorne Fish stated that they served Portland’s best fish and chips, gluten-free, and “Go Packers.” Inside it was a fairly large space with a wraparound bar in the middle, booths along the wall, and some tables. We arrived at around 6:15 p.m. and several of the booths were occupied. More would fill up as we had dinner. There was lots of fish and nautical-themed décor including a poster of tropical fish near our table and another poster that said Lure, Washington Apples with a picture of a fish. Our table had a nautical chart on it under clear plastic showing the water off the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. There was also some Green Bay Packers-themed décor such as a Packers clock and a banner of their championship years. Near the bar were some neon beer logos including Alaskan Amber.
The menus were only 2-3 pages long but still listed many things. They served neither Coke nor Pepsi products but rather RC Cola and 7 Up. The first section was “Bait” that listed the appetizers. They cost between $1.75 for single oyster shooters and $12.50 for Chilean mussels. Most cost $6-$8. They included Wisconsin cheese curds. The next section “Soups and Salads” included a Mexican seafood soup that looked pretty good. My wife read that they served the best soup in Portland in reference to their crab pepper cheese soup. There were also sections “From the Grill,” “Sandwiches,” “Fish Tacos” (served a la carte), “Portland’s Best Fish & Chips” and “Fish and Chips” combos. A separate menu on the table listed their desserts and many of them were dairy-free. The menu was very good about listing their potential food allergens. There were many fish choices including cod, yellow perch, halibut, salmon, catfish, oysters, walleye, prawns, and clam strips. They also listed many side dishes.
We placed our orders and they brought them fairly quickly. We actually just ordered one thing for dinner to split between the two of us: the Boatload combo. It consisted of three pieces each of fried cod, walleye, oysters, and chile-fried catfish on a large bed of their “World’s Greatest” fries. My wife enjoyed the oysters and the cod and walleye were good. The latter were small fried steaks of fish with the skin still on them. The fries were very good, long and crispy without the grease, and great flavor. They could make a case for the World’s Greatest. We had a choice of three sauces but we couldn’t decide. They brought us all three: tartar, jalapeño tartar, and cocktail sauce. I liked the jalapeño tartar sauce best. But the real highlight of the meal was the chile-fried catfish. Dipped in chile-garlic sauce and flash-fried in rice flour, it had exactly the right combination of spicy flavor, crispness, and flaky fish consistency.
We ordered dessert from the menu on our table. My wife ordered just one scoop of huckleberry ice cream. It actually looked much more than one scoop and looked elegant in a small sundae cup. My piece of non-dairy carrot cake had a carrot design in icing on top. It tasted great, just as I remember carrot cake with cream cheese icing before I stopped eating dairy. It was a great dinner in Portland.
We left the Hawthorne Fish House well-satisfied. To return to the motel we drove west on Hawthorne and north on 39th/Cesar E. Chavez. We passed a large, wooded park on the right. When we reached Burnside we noticed it was 2-way at that point but we wanted to take Couch Street back. We found it after initially missing it because it was just a narrow side street at that point. After several blocks, the Couch Street we were on ended at a perpendicular median. We noticed that the west direction lanes of E. Burnside veered north and west to become the rest of Couch Street. We had to make a turnaround to get back on track but soon returned to the motel.
We were only at the motel a short time before heading out for the Orecon at the Doubletree Hotel. Initially we took Couch Street to MLK but soon realized that MLK was 1-way going south at that point. The corresponding northbound street seemed to be Grand. We worked our way to Grand, crossed the 30 and several streets before turning right at Multnomah. We soon found the Doubletree Hotel and the next task was to find parking. A sign advertised parking for $2.00 per hour at the hotel. It looked like there was parking on the street but the signs said it was just 2-hour parking. We turned right at NE 11th Ave. and made another right at the second east-west street we reached. We again turned right onto N.E. 9th Ave. and found some spaces on the right with a sign that said 4-hour parking. We parked and the machine said it was closed. We were about to leave when a guy waiting behind us said we could park there because it was after hours for the meters. It was nearly 8:00 p.m. We locked up the car, and walked around to the Doubletree Hotel entrance.
There were no signs for the National Puzzlers League convention. We walked down a hall and recognized someone from the L.A. puzzlers. We followed him and some others down a hall until we all found some people who knew where the welcome meeting would be held. It was in a large ballroom with many round tables and a stage along the far wall. We met up with some more L.A. puzzlers we knew and sat with some of them. They mentioned the hospitality suite where we could find the handouts for the con. It was in a hotel suite on the first floor near the swimming pool. In it we found many snacks and pens and paper but no handouts. A notice said that the handouts were in a room in the executive meeting center (EMC). We found the EMC that was behind some glass doors and had its own check-in desk with staff. Down a hall we found the room with the handouts. They had the orange con programs and many puzzles by NPL members or “Krewe” as they call themselves. I was very impressed with the meeting and conference facilities of the Doubletree Hotel. They seemed quite fancy and extensive.
We returned to the ballroom on the second floor. Something else I noticed was how casual all of the other puzzlers dressed. In most cases they wore shorts and T-shirts or jeans and T-shirts. This was in sharp contrast to the elegant surroundings at the hotel. Even the emcee, Will Shortz, the editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle, wore shorts and a T-shirt. But somehow, the casual dress code seemed to fit the con quite well. Nearly all the tables were filled. Not long after 8:00 p.m., the regular program began. Will Shortz welcome us all. Either he or the host, Maso read a humorous message from a puzzler who had supposedly traveled to Portland, Maine instead. They recognized the person who had traveled the farthest: all the way from Australia. They also recognized the former crossword editor of the London Times, Brian Greer who now lived in Portland, OR and first learned of the con a few days ago.
The first game was done in lieu of introductions. Each table had 30 minutes to rewrite the lyrics to a well-known song introducing each of the puzzlers at the table, saying where they’re from, and something interesting and/or if it was their first con. The puzzler Hathor coordinated the game and she along with Willz, TMcAy, and others did an example to “Copacabana.” They then passed out songs to choose from to each of the tables. We received the 5 songs “Friday I’m in Love” by The Cure, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” (sp?) from Mary Poppins, “Life Is Like a Bowl of Cherries,” a song I hadn’t heard of but the others had, “Downtown” by Petula Clark, and “Lola” by the Kinks. We chose “Downtown” because it was a song everyone had heard of. We had some difficulty rewriting the lyrics. It is not an easy song. Each of us picked a stanza and wrote it about ourselves. After a half hour they had everyone from each table get up on stage and sing their songs. In some cases everyone sang while in others only some of the people sang. We think the other tables may have had easier songs to choose from. We noticed there were several celebrities from the crossword-solving world including Tyler Hinman (nom: Mosayc), Trip Payne (nom: Qaqaq), and Ellen Ripstein (nom: En). All three are past winners of the American Crossword Puzzle tournament and they were featured in the 2006 documentary film Wordplay along with Will Shortz.
It was still fun watching the others perform their songs. Most were humorous such as one mentioning that a puzzler liked orange because it has “a peel” (or “appeal” depending on how you listen). I thought our song went OK. It seemed like many puzzlers came from the Seattle area along with Portland, the East Coast and a few from the Midwest. Most of the puzzlers we knew from L.A. did not come. I think 6-7 there. After we had all finished our songs we split into groups of 3-5 to do the next group puzzle game: Brainstormers that was compiled and presented by T McAy. It was some lateral thinking clues made up by different members of the Krewe. They were very difficult, but still interesting things to learn. This was the last large-group game. Next were the after-hours games in small informal groups. We played Trios by the L.A. puzzler Bluff who we knew well. We had played a similar version of the game at the last L.A. puzzle party in November 2011 at Bluff’s house. We formed a team of three with the puzzler Mycroft from Missouri. I thought we did pretty good at this game, sometimes having to guess. After Trios we played a team trivia game hosted by Famulus who my wife later learned was another crossword puzzle celebrity, Stanley Newman. We were able to keep up with the other team for about half the game but then they pulled away from us. One question had the answer “Elvis has left the building.”
It was getting very late. We walked around to watch other puzzlers playing after-hours games. One involved clues displayed on a laptop. Another involved picking up plastic letters. I think it was the L.A. puzzler Marcus Asparagus who said something about a labyrinth puzzle in one of the rooms in the EMC. The NPL had three or four rooms there, all named for past U.S. presidents. I think there was a Roosevelt, Jackson, and Jefferson. It was getting very late, around 1:00 a.m. and we decided to drive back to the Eastside Lodge. We didn’t feel very tired, but didn’t want to have to sleep in too long. There was no ticket on our car after parking there for over five hours. It really was free. We’re glad we had a chance to see the puzzlers again and play with them. It might be a while before we get another chance. It was a great first evening with Orecon and Portland’s best fish and chips.