Southeast Portland

When you think of Portland [1], do you conjure up images of a slightly stoned hippie utopia? Or do you envision mobs of twenty-something hipsters flashing tattoos and piercings in a slacker coffeehouse? Rest assured that both stereotypes are alive and well—in fact thriving—in Southeast Portland, the city’s most alternative neighborhood and a focus of progressive political energy.

Southeast Portland is actually a vast quadrant, and despite its reputation as a habitat for seemingly unaging hippie culture, in fact it’s quite a bit more complex.

The close-in Southeast is a gentrifying warehouse district flanked to the east by Portland’s most alternative neighborhoods. Centered on SE Hawthorne Boulevard [2], these Victorian residential neighborhoods are still home to Portland’s Youth Culture, even though some of these folks are reaching retirement age.

To the graying hippies, add in a thick overlay of Goth kids, gays and lesbians, and street musicians, and you’ve got a people-watching nexus.

The neighborhood stretches east across leafy neighborhoods filled with antique mansions to busy SE 82nd Avenue, the hub of today’s immigrant Asian community.

Two of Portland [1]’s greatest parks are in Southeast Portland—one designed by the famed Olmsted firm a century ago (Laurelhurst Park [3]), the other situated on the only extinct volcano in an American city (Mount Tabor Park [4])—along with some of the city’s most critically acclaimed independent restaurants.