Awaiting Culture

I feel like I am growing in my understanding of the Portland culture. It has been weeks since I have used an umbrella, I have grown a beard, I am increasingly snobbish in my taste for locally sourced ingredients, I cut down my own Christmas tree, & I even walked by three trash cans yesterday with a water bottle looking to recycle it. But there are two element of Portland culture that I am completely perplexed by…

Waiting.
&

Waiting.

(Notice my use of the ampersand… totally Portland.)

Waiting for a table is uncommonly common.

In a town that has a reputation for rain (& not using umbrellas), it strikes me odd that so many restaurants incorporate a TSA-style reservation system. The number of sidewalks that have been transformed into hostess stations is comical. Thank you Screen Door, Tasty & Sons, Salt-n-Straw, Pok Pok, Apizza Scholls, Tin Shed, the list goes on & on… Believe me, I understand the social rewards of being able to get a table at one of these establishments is significant (not to mention gastronomically rewarding), however it is promoting a Duggar-esque birth control plan just to be able to have a party of ten or more to skip the sidewalk & be guaranteed a seat.

Waiting your own table is uncommonly common.

The second is the bus-your-own-table requirements. It takes a degree in biochemistry to be able to understand what item goes in what hole in the countertop. A recent lunch at Whole Foods provided 6 options for busing. Seriously. Six options for a bowl of Moorish Paella and a glass of water!!

Number 1 & 2
Dishes & utensils. - You would think this would be the easiest, however, often times there are two buckets. I would suppose that one is for utensils and one for dishes, yet sometimes one is for glasses and the other is for everything else. Or maybe small plates in one and larger items in the other. I am overthinking this…. right?

Number 3
Landfill. - Which is a guilt invoking way to say trash. I already drive a Prius & we make our own granola, I recycle (see above), & I bought my wife a pair of TOMS for Christmas. Anything you place in this bin should come with a free month of therapy.

Number 4
Compost. - This is pretty straight forward, but can also get tricky. Can you compost recycled paper napkins? Or do those go in a different bin? What about meat items? I had a friend who would feed his composting items to his chickens until I asked him what he did with the uneaten BBQ chicken pizza we just ate. He looked up at me in horror, realizing that for years he had basically been promoting and manufacturing the chicken version of Solyent Green. I don’t want to be that guy.

Number 5
Co-Mingle Recycling. - Which sounds like a new dating website for recent divorcees. However, I get the idea. Kinda. But only because there is one more spot for non-co-mingled recycling, which is called …

Number 6
Glass. - The easiest and most straight forward of the five options. Honestly, if the five previous options were labeled like this it wouldn’t take me ten minutes to bus my dishes. Which is important, because there is probably a line of people waiting for my table.