Carye Bye’s Hidden Portland tour visits public art, architecture and museums in the Cultural District…including the rarely visited Portland Police Museum (above)
You asked for ‘em, we’re making it happen! In case you haven’t caught wind, DPC is now offering a series of three recurring walking tours of downtown Portland. The first three tours went great, and we asked each of our guides for a recap…in hopes you’ll join them this month.
Today’s recap comes from Carye Bye, “Portland’s Museum Lady,” who leads Hidden Portland: City Treasures (coming up Friday, October 19 and Friday, November 9). In case you missed it, the Portland Mercury tagged along and reviewed the tour. Read it here. From Carye:
My first tour went great! I had a mix of people. A few long term Portlanders, a few new in the last 5-10 years, and one short term visitor. A mother and daughter went on the tour and they were having great fun reminiscing because the father/husband used to work downtown in the city. So they were noticing new things and remembering the old.
My tour is somewhat informal and small group so it gave a chance for people to show me things they were noticing. The Hidden Portland tour is all about learning to train yourself to be in what I call Explore mode. This means you are an active participant in the environment.
On this tour, a man was cleaning outside of the Portland Art Museum, he knew a lot about the building and shared some secrets with the group! At the end of the tour one person said “It’s over?!” with a little disappointment on her face. That’s a pretty good compliment for a 2 1/2 hour walking tour. We are having so much fun explore the city and learning from each other on our “group art date” that it’s hard to believe how fast the time goes!
Each tour group is going to be different depending on who is on the tour which means I can slightly tailor the tour to who is in the group since there’s more to see than we have time for. So it makes every tour not quite the same as the last. Also have goodies I hand out to the tour so you don’t want to miss out on those!
There’s still 5 spots left for this month’s tour. Don’t miss it; sign up for the Oct 19 tour now. Or, take the tour on Nov 9.
2 Comments
Yeah, Carye Bye, the Local Museum Lady, is a very good fit with Dill Pickle Club: She assumes the city is accessible, has a personal-level respect for the Small as well as the Mighty, and definitely has a DIY appreciation of the civic treasures of Portland. That’s what I got from the 10/19/12 Hidden Portland tour.
As we approach the old federal courthouse downtown (now just a GSA building), she says to us, “If you see an interesting building, you just go in,” and opens the door for us to follow. All that’s immediately accessible is a vintage ornate lobby with a vigilant guard. She casually engages him, and we slowly pass through to another exit with wonder and appreciation. It’s a welcome surprise. And did you know the best/easiest place to appreciate Portlandia the statue is from the 2nd floor across the street? I never noticed I could just go up the escalator.
Too many museums, both the grand and the impromptu, to fully engage with on an almost-3-hour tour, but she gives us an interest in so many — to fully explore later, maybe with other people. From large architecture to sculpture to tiny objects to the really offbeat. Now that’s good balance.
Besides her enthusiasm for all she’s found, and her hope we’ll continue to visit, I most noticed her good attention to relationships — from guards to “curators” to maintenance people to learning from her tour participants’ past experiences.
At the Portland Building, she takes us to the public gallery upstairs. We mosey around it while she directs some people to the rest rooms. Upon her return she notices a meeting room where an unmaintained but attractive treasure — the old wooden model of downtown’s buildings (I’d seen it before by the accident of attending a Trimet public meeting held there) — is possible to see because a guy is cleaning the room and the door is open. She asks him if it is OK (she makes a group look trustworthy so I suspect she regularly gets instant permission), and ushers in those of us nearby. The wooden model was a hit, even though the participants who’d been out of eyeshot were left out.
Carye will always have more to show or tell about (and with handouts and references and sample art!), to inspire all tour participants. Although sometimes I felt too rushed to be able to fully experience some of what I saw, I feel the introduction to some of downtown’s tremendous assets was just right. An all-day museum slog like a standard city tour would not have been as good.
Thanks Jeanne, this is excellent!