TheBanyanTree: Lunch at the Portland City Grill

[Jena Norton]

It was a good ride!
 
Jena Norton



>________________________________
> From: Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com>
>To: Banyan Tree <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> 
>Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 9:44 PM
>Subject: TheBanyanTree: Lunch at the Portland City Grill
> 
>
>We met a couple of Mr C's childhood friends for lunch today. Childhood, as
>in pre-high school. This will be an important fact later. One of them,
>Kenny, lives in the Portland area, but the other, Chris, was coming through
>on his way back to Anchorage, after deciding Oklahoma wasn't a good fit for
>him. He's a photographer, and going back to Alaska in time for a couple of
>wedding shoots this summer. I've never met either either of them, which is
>irrelevant to this story, but indicates how well my therapy is coming along
>(being that I met new people).
>
>That's a different story. We'll talk about how I'm helping my therapist
>decide what to do with his life later.
>
>By the time we got there, Chris and Kenny had seats in the bar next to the
>windows, with a view of Portland. Thirty stories up means it's quite a
>view, and I'd go for that alone, especially on a day like today, when the
>sun is out and you can see from miles. One of these days I'll have to take
>sash there for a lunch time celebration, but it must be on a clear sunny
>day.
>
>Our waitress was in her 20's, a nice mix of friendly and ditzy. Or maybe
>it's just the age.
>
>As the boys talked I admired the view, and tried not tell Chris he was dumb
>for saying he had to pay $5,000 to become an LLC. I try to refrain from
>insulting people when we're out socially. Both Chris and Kenny have LLC's,
>which is apparently the thing to do in one's thirties.
>
>At one point Andrew mentioned something about David, a friend from high
>school. Chris and Kenny went to a different high school, since Andrew's dad
>had moved the family to a better part of town, so they don't know David.
>Chris said, "Oh, the Asian guy, right?"
>
>I found this hilarious.
>
>Yes. David is Chinese.
>
>I found this hilarious because Chris is Korean.
>
>Yeah, the Asian guy.
>
>There was something in the way he said it, as if Asian was meant to
>encompass a subset of something. Or other.
>
>I don't know, and I didn't ask, and Andrew said, "Right."
>
>We laughed about it later.
>
>Kenny left first, because he had to get back to work, which was a block
>away. (If I were a block away from the Portland City Grill I'd be eating up
>there more often.)
>
>The three of us talked a bit more, and when we left Chris said he was going
>to visit some breweries, brewery visiting being the in thing to do around
>here. But he didn't leave . . . instead, he sidled up to the bar and
>ordered a beer, preparing to give the waitress/bartender his full spiel.
>("I'm a photographer, I shoot fashion models . . . " which he does,
>sometimes, but mostly he doesn't. Mostly he does less glamorous
>photography.)
>
>If you've never seen How I Met Your Mother, this won't make sense, but as
>we left, Andrew said to me, "He's just like Barney," the perpetual sleazy
>player.
>
>Kenny's really nice though.
>
>
>M
>(I'm jumping back on the horse and am out of practice, so this is what you
>get.)
>
>
>