Perrin Smith has walked every mile of every street in Portland

43-year-old North Portland resident Perrin Smith has done something extraordinary. In a quest that was part of his life for nearly three years, he walked every single street and alleyway in the City of Portland. That’s about 2,100 miles of pavement, gravel, grass, mud, and sidewalks.

Born and raised in rural New Jersey, he “escaped” the East Coast and came to Portland in 2006 after graduating from Northern Arizona University. A veteran of competitive running, Smith was geared up for a big season in 2020 when Covid hit and everything changed.

“I was bummed and really needed something to do,” he told me in an interview Monday for the BikePortland Podcast. “I started following people on Instagram who were running every single street and it looked like fun. And I thought, ‘Sure. Why not? I’ll do it’.” (Smith was inspired by Rickey Gates, an author and notable endurance runner who popularized the “Every Single Street” movement.)

Smith fired up his Strava app and, since he was still in competitive-mode, started his challenge running all the miles. When an injury struck, he switched to walking and the real journey began. “I started to realize that I liked walking even more, because I was going slower. I was stopping to take photos, I was looking at graffiti, or someone’s weird artwork in their front yard. And I just I kind of slowed down life and I looked around more, which is not something that I ever did. I was always so focused on running, but it became more about exploring and learning.”

“And ever since then I have done everything that I was doing, slower.”

His day job as a pizza cook didn’t require him to explore Portland, so he found himself navigating new neighborhoods with fresh eyes. At the start, he’d drive across town to start a walk. But a harrowing car crash in August 2022 led him to stop driving. Then he decided to not renew his license, has been carfree for over a year now, and used his bike or public transit to get across town and fill in new parts of the map.

The scariest place he walked? Marine Drive or Airport Way were both “pretty terrifying” he shared. (Note: If there was an off-street bike path adjacent to a street, he would not take it. He felt walking on the street was a required part of the challenge.)

His favorite place to walk? Southwest hills: Hillsdale, Maplewood and Markham neighborhoods especially. “It’s so much quieter down there. It’s like a totally different town.”

In one neighborhood he found a bunch of houses that had strange, artistic mailboxes. One of them, jokingly marked “Air Mail” was on a pole, 20-feet off the ground. He also walked with a group of friendly peacocks in southeast near Johnson Creek. One time a guy chased him down and angrily demanded to know what he was doing. “I’m just walking on the street! What’s the problem?” Smith remembers thinking.

But it’s the rich memories of every nook and cranny of Portland and everything he learned along the way that he’ll remember most. “I miss it. I really miss it,” Smith said. “I’d do it again.”

 

For more of this amazing story, please visit BikePortland.org to hear all about it in their podcast.

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SELF-STARTER HOME

When Emilia Callero and Jake Creviston first entered the Portland real estate market in 2016, they had certain expectations about how it was going to go. The city was in one of its hottest real estate bubbles in history, and properties were going in two days, with several offers. The couple had planned to search for a few months before landing the right place, but they ending up touring — and eventually buying — one house. It was a bank-owned, “marked” property in North Portland’s Arbor Lodge neighborhood where the owner, a vet, had died by suicide.

“Most people are really spooked by that,” says Callero, the lead for the interior design firm Emilia Decor. “We weren’t.”

Most historic homes need a lot of love — but Callero and Creviston might have been the best, most qualified people for the job. At the time, Callero was a budding interior designer eager for an all-consuming project she could use to build her portfolio. Her husband, Jake, is a psychiatric nurse practitioner who was working with veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. He also loves to build and was ready to take on major DIY house projects.

“The whole place felt like it needed an injection of something,” Callero says. “I wanted a place where I could really get my hands dirty and learn.”

The first room they tackled was the kitchen — which was really just a closed-in butler’s pantry about the size of a closet. It had no cabinetry, no room to move around, so they took it down to its studs, completely redid the floor plan and opened up the space. Today it’s a place of love and light perfect for a young family life (they are also parents to children Olive, 5, and Lucca, 2).

In the living room, they peeled off red-and-white circus tent wallpaper and added a large globe pendant light. Callero found workarounds for the Craftsman’s storage limitations by reupholstering an IKEA bench for the kids’ gloves and hats.

In the library, they added built-in bookshelves with their own lighting system designed by Creviston. He also styled their stairwell at the back of the home with cheeky black-and-white photography.

They set up the main living room to be a calm space where their daughter can play “office” and the whole family can have second breakfast on the weekends.

As they shape their spaces, the couple has been figuring out how to meld their very different styles and persuasions, much the way a couple might find balance in a marriage therapist’s office. Hers is a playful mix of modern, traditional, global and bohemian, and his is a little punk rock.

“He’s way more edgy than me,” Callero says. “He grew up in mosh pits, and I was that dreamy kid over there reading books in the sun.”

Callero might throw Grandma’s handmade lace on the dining room table, while Creviston paints all of the trim in the upstairs black. Callero will pick a muted graphic wallpaper inspired by her time living in Mexico, while Creviston hangs a skateboard on the wall. It all works — an eclectic mix that feels personal and soulful.

“I see this with every couple I work with,” Callero says. “Every single time, the couples learn about what they each like and how they each relate to things like color and pattern.”

Callero, who is self-taught, has seen her own style grow and change throughout the process. With kids in the home, she’s less in love with open shelving in the kitchen — “Never again, for me,” she says — and more confident and bold in how she sees and uses color in her designs. Her overall color palette has changed a bit, but not her intuition with color, something that attracts clients to her design work.

“I’m always drawn to color — across the spectrum of tones and hues,” Callero says.

And living with someone who has his own aesthetic drives and desires — and who works as a therapist — has given them both a great understanding about the ever-changing conversation that needs to happen about how to occupy a home in a partnership. Callero has built those discussions into her design process, always starting with those crucial conversations necessary to really get to know her clients.

“Design is kind of like marriage,” Callero says. “We are never like: Oh, we got it, we figured out your style and my style and how to blend it. It’s been great to just realize that we’re always going to be tweaking things, in every house we live in, forever.”

 

For this and similar articles, please visit Oregon Home

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Eggs raised or sold in Oregon and Washington must now be cage free

In this Oct. 21, 2015, file photo, cage-free chickens walk in a fenced pasture at an organic farm near Waukon, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)AP

Nearly all commercial egg farms in Oregon and Washington must now keep their hens cage free, under laws that went into effect Jan. 1.

The nearly identical laws in both states were passed in 2019 but neither took effect immediately in order to give egg producers time to change their practices.

The laws mandate that commercial farms with 3,000 or more chickens give their birds room to move around and that any egg producers looking to sell within the states also have cage-free birds. Oregon Senate Bill 1019 outlines minimum space for chickens, and requires that they be allowed to “roam unrestricted, other than by external walls” and are “provided with enrichments that allow the hens to exhibit natural behavior, including, at a minimum, scratch areas, perches, nest boxes and dust bathing areas.”

Oregon and Washington join a handful of other states that have passed similar laws. California and Massachusetts already have cage-free laws in place, and more states – Utah, Colorado, Rhode Island, Nevada, Arizona and Michigan – have passed laws that will go into effect in the coming years.

A 2022 Associated Press report said that the percentage of U.S. hens in cage-free housing rose from 4% in 2010 to 28% in 2020, and “that figure is expected to more than double to about 70% in the next four years.”

When Oregon’s law was passed in 2019, the Humane Society said the move would improve the well-being of some 4 million hens in the state.

“Most hens used in egg production are confined in barren wire cages, and each bird has less space than a single sheet of paper, preventing her from even extending her wings,” the Humane Society wrote. “Chickens are inquisitive, active animals and life inside a cage is one of frustration and deprivation.”

Small farms with fewer than 3,000 hens are exempted from the requirement, and there are other exceptions for things like county fairs, 4-H exhibitions, veterinary care needs and transportation of animals.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture says that to date, no farms have been found out of compliance. Violators could receive penalties of up to $2,500.

Eggs prices, meanwhile, reached a historic high in 2023 for a variety of reasons, including higher costs for feed and fuel and outbreaks of avian flu, but economics say more ethical eggs can mean higher prices.

Shoppers might see both cage-free or free-range labels on their eggs at the grocery store. The difference? Cage-free hens may live entirely indoors while free-range hens have outdoor access.

 

For this and similar articles, please visit OregonLive

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