OK, we are still a bit shaky, but I needed to get this down. Tonight we went to a restaurant called Tusk as a recommendation from Kavka, the lady we met at the blues festival yesterday. It’s just around the corner in Hipsville and it was chockers full of customers. They kindly propped us up at the bar and this place was a ball of energy with finely tuned staff. See below the photo from the wall behind the bar. A huge black and white of Keith Richards on the Exile on Main St tour of the USA in 1973. The menu was predominately vegetarian with a bit of meat and chicken. The restaurant has won a number of awards since opening last August including best restaurant in the USA by the US Food and Wine magazine, so we were totally surprised that they let rabble like us in. The meal was awesome and it only cost $60 for 2 including drinks.
Now…..as we walked out of Tusk there were 3 women chatting outside and I immediately recognised one of them as Carrie Brownstein, oone-half of the creative machine that is “Portlandia”. Holy shit!! We kept walking but I kept looking back and she could see I was. A random guy sitting on a wall on the sidewalk could see what we saw and simply said, “go on, what have you got to lose.” Thanks random guy! I then convinced Lynda that we should go back as we had the best excuse ever! We approached, apologized for interrupting and then spewed out, “You’re the reason we came here!” She was absolutely gorgeous and calm given I was salivating and staring like a giddy school boy. She asked a few questions and said she had been to Melbourne which she had with her all girl punk band Sleater-Kinney who were hugely influential in the early 2000’s and sparked a resurgence in girls putting bands together. As it turned out one of her friends was Corin Tucker who was also in Sleater-Kinney and is a former girlfriend of Carrie’s. She was really friendly also and understanding that we were totally startstruck. To come all the way to Portland because of Portlandia and meet the star is ridiculous. Thankfully I had my new Radio Birdman T shirt on which gave me some small level of punk credibility!
Anyway we wandered off in a daze and laughed our stupid heads off. Carrie and Corin’s other friend kindly took some photos. Who woulda thunk it?
