Timid Childhood Leads to Intriguing Discoveries as an Adult in Portland

I grew up in Hillsboro, but as a child never ventured much into the city. I was about 25 when I was first taken to the Mission Theater. I saw the movie Fight Club, enjoyed a couple pints of Ruby along with some nachos, and spent much of the time before the film staring around the place wondering how many other historical buildings there might be in this town that I have yet to visit.

Over the next few years, and now back from college, I settled into the city at an apartment on King Street, and began to venture out of those streets in NW, discovering all manner of bars and dives that became for me ritual pilgrimage each weekend.

Far from being the only renovated theater of the McMenamins, The Mission still has a unique charm, but its history is much less charming, than intriguing... in its transformation from church to union hall to movie theater. I could have researched the history and wrote about it myself, but the historians from McMenamins did a much better job than I could have hoped with this piece.

Does anyone out there have any experiences worth sharing about their discoveries in Portland?