True Portland: The Unofficial Guide for Creative People

True Portland: The Unofficial Guide for Creative People is more than a travel guide, it’s a curated experience that captures the essence of what makes Portland different from other cities. In addition to the essential information about where to eat, sleep, shop, run, create, listen, and think, this book has distinctive features such as 48 Hours in Portland, offering nine itineraries by local tastemakers, and interviews with and commentaries by Portland luminaries including Chairwoman of Columbia Sportswear Gert Boyle and Executive Chef at Departure Gregory Gourdet, about what makes Portland unique. This comprehensive guide presents both longtime residents and first‐time visitors with exceptional insights into Portland.

Inside this book you’ll find:
• A highly visual, full-color guide (with maps and itineraries) to what and who makes Portland tick.
• Comprehensive listings for Portland’s lively food and drink scene, ranging from its chef-owned restaurants, food carts, and pop-ups to local coffee roasters, specialty tea businesses, craft beer brewers, hard cideries, urban wineries, and cocktail culture.
• The inside scoop on Portland’s progressive, free-spirited side, including skateparks, cycling, independent record labels, independent presses and bookstores, tattoo shops, LGBTQ businesses, and even vape shops.
• Wide-ranging outdoor adventures at close-in Portland locations, including the International Rose Test Garden, Forest Park, Mt. Tabor (the city’s favorite dormant volcano), and the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade.
• Natural wonders farther afield, such as the Willamette Valley (Oregon’s beloved wine country), Mt. Hood, the Columbia River Gorge, and the Oregon Coast.
• Other standouts: a brief history of Powell’s Books, the lowdown on Portland’s myriad record shops, stylish clothing and furniture designers, neighborhood farmers markets, historic beer-and-pizza movie theaters, diverse art galleries, neighborhood parks, the surrounding urban forest, stand-up comedy, and a month-to-month guide to Portland’s favorite celebrated annual events.

"The same year Popeye’s guide dropped, design icon Teruo Kurosaki — who’d begun a Portland-inspired food-cart pod and farmers market in Tokyo the previous year — published a book-length guide to our city titled True Portland, praising what he calls our city’s "future vision," a confluence of maker culture, ecologically oriented city planning and forward-thinking design. When it came out, True Portland became the best-selling Japanese-language guidebook of any kind." Matthew Korfhage, Willamette Week

"[Teruo Kurosaki’s] a bit like Terence Conran and Giulio Cappellini rolled into one: a talent-spotter, retailer and manufacturer who has introduced his countrymen to Western contemporary design and helped a string of designers – including Marc Newson, Philippe Starck and Shiro Kuramata – gain international recognition." Marcus Fairs, Icon Magazine

Teruo Kurosaki is a Tokyo-based cultural luminary. In the 1980s, he opened the first furniture design store Idée, which quickly became Japan’s leading contemporary furniture design business, with many more shops to follow in Tokyo and throughout Japan. In 1999, he founded the Tokyo Designers Block — a world-renowned international design event. Since then, he has founded Tokyo’s United Nations University Farmers Market and hosted many food and drink festivals there, published numerous books and publications through his Media Surf company, founded Freedom University – a forward-thinking continuing education school, and founded three Midori co-working spaces throughout Tokyo.

Recently I spent a good amount of time watching the great PBS food series The Mind of a Chef. The show typically sticks with one chef for several episodes — shadowing them at their restaurant(s) and with their staff, and also traveling with them into the wider world of their inspiring culinary adventures...

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