Marc Moscato has a crystal-clear mission. He wants Portland residents to see the connections between the city’s rich cultural past and its future. Director of the Dill Pickle Club, a nonprofit organization that develops programming to “help us understand the place in which we live,” Moscato believes that it is essential to showcase the overlooked details of our shared histories through lectures and educational tours like the one he’s organized for this weekend, June 19-20.
Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: A Walking Tour of Portland’s Chinatown is the first of five Dill Pickle Club tours in the “Forgotten Histories” series. Highlighting Chinatown, an area that has struggled with its identity in the face of urban growth and demise, the tour features obscure cultural, architectural, and historical sites, oral histories, and a rare lecture by Dr. Marie Rose Wong, a scholar and associate professor specializing in urban design at the Institute of Public Service, Seattle University. Dr. Wong is also the author of Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland Oregon, (University of Washington, 2004), an authoritative chronicle of Portland’s Chinatowns from the 1850s through the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1940s.
“Our [Dill Pickle Club] tours are designed for people who live in Portland and are actually interested in factual not sensationalized history,” says Moscato. “The tour is much more in depth than something that is created just for tourists, and there are several stops that may be rather mysterious to people that are not members of the Chinese communities.”
In the past, Republic Cafe was a gambling den.
Starting at the Purest Café, walkers will spend three hours on a guided tour through Chinatown, stopping at familiar landmarks like the Chinatown gates, and less recognizable ones.
With the Dill Pickle Club behind it, the Chinatown tour promises the mystique of “underground” insights. The organization, founded in 2009, was crafted in the image of the radical Jazz-Age speakeasy in Chicago, the Dill Pickle Club, which attracted bohemian intellectuals and activists interested in art and politics. Although there is not a physical space to gather, Moscato’s Club applies the same radical spirit to its programming. This could explain why their tours are especially popular with the 20 to 30 year old creatives and the retired baby boomers. “This just seems to be who is attracted to our tours,” says Moscato.
The Dill Pickle Club partnered with Friends of Portland Chinatown who used their specific knowledge of the urban history and connections to elders with deep roots in Chinatown to create stops along the tour route for walkers to hear personal memories of the families, businesses, and associations that thrived in the area for almost 150 years.
Golden Dragon Cafe
Reclaiming Portland’s Chinatown
Early Chinatown’s cultural contributions to Portland have been largely lost in the city’s social and economic reconfigurations. Once home to the second largest population of Chinese immigrants in the U.S., as well as Greek and Japanese families, the area between the Pearl and Downtown districts buzzed with commerce, restaurants, schools and cultural gathering places.
According to Ivy Lin, founding member of Friends of Portland’s Chinatown and the creator of the documentary film, Pig Roast & Tank of Fish, Old Town/Chinatown was the urban core of the Portland and the point from which the rest of the city grew.
“Early Chinese immigrants helped build the city of Portland, and also the state of Oregon,” says Lin. “Yet, there is this huge disconnect between Chinatown and the rest of Portland, as well as newly arrived Chinese immigrants who view Chinatown as an abandoned neighborhood, by the City [when it comes to urban renewal plans], and by the Chinese business owners who have moved to Southeast 82nd Avenue, where most Chinese now reside.” She notes that urban blight and the lack of a cultural museum in the area makes Chinatown and its history nearly invisible to most residents.
This unassuming door (center) leads to the Yat Sing Music Club.
But Lin and others dedicated to reviving the area’s cultural and architectural heritage are hoping that Chinatown’s future will be brighter than its recent past.
“The mission of Friends of Portland Chinatown is to bring foot traffic and historical awareness through cultural events in the hope of gaining support for revitalizing Portland’s Chinatown,” says Lin.
In addition to this weekend’s walking tours, the organization has planned a number of events around the Yat Sing Music Club’s 68th Anniversary in September. The Yat Sing Music Club, which is included in the Sweet Cakes, Long Journey tour, is a Cantonese opera club founded in 1942. The Club is considered the oldest traditional music group in Portland and still meets every Monday at 10 p.m., after businesses and restaurants have closed. The musicians—mainly older generation Cantonese—play traditional instruments used in opera, lead by a percussion player who sets and maintains the rhythm.
The former Wong's Cleaners (left), and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (right).
Information
The Saturday tour departs from the Purest Café, 115 Southwest Ash Street, at 3 p.m. The tour is sold out but the Dill Pickle Club has made several tickets available on a first come first serve basis. The Sunday tour departs from the Purest Café, 115 Southwest Ash Street at 2 p.m. This tour is also sold out but several tickets have been made available on a first come first serve basis.
General admission is $15, $10 for Dill Pickle Club members. For more information visit: www.dillpickleclub.com.
View the slideshow for more images of the Chinatown walking tour or visit our Flickr gallery:
All photos © 2010 Neighborhood Notes
