Our neighborhood, Sellwood-Moreland

Today was so warm and sunny that I decided to take Sammie out on a walk to take some photos of our neighborhood. We live in Sellwood, which is part of southeastern Portland and about 3 miles south of downtown. It originated as its own city and was actually a rival of Portland, only later to become annexed in 1893. The population is approximately 10,500 with half as many households. Westmoreland is another small neighborhood that is adjacent to ours, and often they're referred together as Sellwood-Moreland because today they're virtually the same. The pictures below are from both Sellwood and Westmoreland (there's also an Eastmoreland on the other side of McLoughlin Boulevard). If you're interested at looking at a map, I walked east from our house at 9th and Tacoma, went north on 13th, curved around onto Bybee, and then circled back home.


This shows the intersection of SE 13th and SE Tacoma, just down the block from us. There's a New Seasons grocery store, several coffee shops, Hollywood Video, and tons of restaurants and various shops within a few blocks of where this photo was taken.

Just around the corner on SE 13th.

SE 13th is also known as "Antique Row", because there's probably a dozen antique shops on this street alone. I'm not one for antiques, but I did check out a couple stores and they seemed incredibly overpriced. My guess is that it's something the store owners can get away with here because this area is known for antiques and people will come out here to spend money on it.

Grand Central Bakery is delicious (can you see the fresh bread in the window?!?!?!). REALLY delicious. There are a handful around Portland, and we're lucky to have one about 4 blocks from us.

Thai Lahnna is another block down from Grand Central, and is our favorite Thai in Portland to date. It's in a historic house and the owners and staff are very friendly.

Our local library, the Sellwood-Moreland library is another block up and is part of the Multnomah County Library system. There are also some really cool loft apartments above.

More antiques- I like this one the best because the hanging sign looks like something out of the Lemony Snicket movie.

A neighborhood tree (that Sammie pees on every time we pass, without fail).

View overlooking the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge and downtown in the distance. This is at the curve where SE 13th turns into SE Bybee.


The fall is really long here, and the beautiful colors are just starting to fade.



Another bakery in the area. I have yet to try this one, but it looks delicious. This street is the start of the Westmoreland neighborhood.

Westmoreland's Milwaukie Avenue is the other main street in Sellwood-Moreland. In this photo you can see the Moreland Theatre, which is the last one-screen theatre still in business in Portland. It's actually cheaper (admission and food), the seats are extra cushy, the owners are nice, and it has a really cool old theatre ambience to it. The green part of the building a few doors down is a mish-mash Asian restaurant called Stickers, and their pot stickers are incredible. As a side note, for as small as our neighborhood is, there are tons of restaurants (Italian, Greek, Sushi, etc) that have been continually rated the best in Portland. Lest I forget Mexican- there are 4 that I know of, one of which is both incredible and cheap (we're talking $5, delicious, Chipotle sized burritos). All of this is within 15 minutes walking distance. Lucky for us!

Portland has been named the most dog-friendly cities in the US. Sammie knows all the water stops on the main streets by now, and I regularly take him into the movie store, bank, and post office here. People actually encourage it!

These last two photos are just me being a dork- I finally ordered an electric rice cooker, and it came in the mail today, so of course I had to try it. I'm already obsessed with it. It made delicious rice on the first try, and it was so incredibly easy. Well worth it.

I decided to make some Szechuan green beans and tofu to try out the new rice. Delicious!