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(excerpt from www.bizave.com) Northwest is popular for many reasons. It's close to downtown (an reasonably-easy walk). It has good bus service. The Portland Streetcar takes you from NW into the Pearl District, turn right and goes past Powells Books, into downtown, past the Central Library, and up to Portland State University (the Streetcar is popular). Northwest is also close to major freeways. It's near Washington Park and Montgomery Park. It's also got some terrific old houses and many blocks of old sidewalks lined with tall, shady trees. Though mostly a residential area, there are two major streets of businesses - NW 21st Ave and NW 23rd Ave. These two streets are crowded with foo-foo shops, trendy restaurants, a few book stores and some old bars. Escape From New York on 23rd Ave is also considered by many to have Portland's best pizza (and worst seating).
There's also the Cinema 21 on 21st Ave - the city's popular first-run art house theater. The McMenamins Mission Theatre/Pub (where you can see second-run movies and drink a beer or eat a burger) is also nearby on 17th and Glisan. Northwest is notorious for its horrible on-street parking. Part of the problem is that there are numerous apartment buildings among with the nice houses, so it's a fairly dense area. Portland recently refurbished nearby PGE Park (AAA baseball), and the neighborhood association has started using parking passes nearby, making it hard to park for more than a few hours. Fortunately, the street car and good bus service (and proximity to a MAX station) reduces the need to drive if you're transit-savy. Because Northwest is such a popular area, finding reasonably-priced housing can be difficult; if you have a car, consider the desirability of off-street parking in this neighborhood! But, if you can find a place and you happen to work downtown, you might walk to work or take the bus or train and rarely need to use your car. Here's a tip: In NW Portland, the streets (starting at Burnside and working north) go alphabetically one block at a time. So the streets go north as: Burnside, Couch, Davis, Everett, Flanders, Glisan, Hoyt, Irving, Johnson, Kearney, Lovejoy, Marshall, Northrup, Overton, Pettygrove, Quimby, Raleigh, Savier, Thurman (there are a few past that). So if a place is listed as being near 23rd and Flanders, you know it is 1.2.3.4 - four blocks from Burnside. Pretty close in. Also, it helps to understand how the numbering/addressing scheme works. A place that has an address of 2344 NW Glisan is just west of NW 23rd Ave (between 23rd and 24th)- you can tell from the "23" in the beginning. If it's at 2244 NW Glisan, it's between 22nd Ave and 23rd Ave. If it's at 14344 NW Glisan, it's WAY the heck out there (NW143rd Ave), not at all "close in" to downtown.
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