Aside from the whole YAY WE WENT TO POWELL’S thing, it’s totally worth pointing out the other places we went to as well:

First, a cafe called Backspace, recommended to by . Vegetarian/vegan place, but the sandwiches we had were quite tasty. There was also interesting art on the walls, and it was clear that the place was a musical hub of the neighborhood; there were stickers of local bands all over the washroom walls. Dara gave the manager one of her demo CDs and put her own sticker up on the washroom walls. ^_^

Second, after lunch at Backspace we popped into a little place called Barcade, which was awesome. Lots of old school arcade and pinball games in there, and Dara was stunned, yea, STUNNED I TELL YOU, to see that they had a Bubble Bobble game in there. That was great fun. So was the Lord of the Rings pinball game, on which I won a free game, woo!

And last, in between the main Powell’s store and the Hawthorne store, we went to Everyday Music and between us, Dara and I picked up a perfectly ridiculous number of CDs. I grabbed a couple by Karan Casey and one by Natalie MacMaster, mostly because I love Casey’s voice from her days as Solas’ lead singer, and because I want to give MacMaster another shot with the fiddle playing since I do like the one album of hers I’d had before.

I’d also totally had forgotten that the Roseland is right near the main Powell’s store–the Roseland being the place where we saw Russell Crowe and 30 Odd Foot of Grunts playing in 2001! We drove right past the place and I caught myself grinning at the sight of the sidewalk where , , , , and I had all lined up. I was also pretty sure that the intersection where we’d passed Crowe and a horde of other people was somewhere right around there but damned if I could remember exactly where.

We did not, however, have time to go find the 24 Hour Church of Elvis. Sniff. I told Dara and about how the place had been closed when we’d all tried to look for it before on the day of the Grunts show, which led Dara to protest that clearly the 24 Hour Church of Elvis was engaging in false advertising! 😉 “It’s time for 24 Hour Church of Elvis Reformed”, she declared.

It was overall really quite a lovely afternoon, despite periodic bursts of rainshowers. There was a laid-back and relaxed kind of grooviness both to the neighborhood right around Powell’s and in the Hawthorne neighborhood as well–the sort of air I kind of miss from the better days of the U-district. Plus, we came home with books and CDs and got to have a lovely road trip.

All in all, a good day.