Portland is filled with people who get up in the morning and put their pants on backwards and then make the correction, at least it appears that way. The city itself wears suspenders and is in the midst of growing a very long beard, a beard so long that a pad of butter might stick to it, completely unbeknownst to the man dining in one of the city's brilliant new restaurants who talks to his companion with the butter stuck to his beard.

Anyone overhearing a conversation at an adjacent table could reasonably come to believe that a citizen here could tell you the difference between sadness and melancholy, and that anything misshapen one sees in the streets is that things' true shape.

Almost everyone walking around Portland appears to realize that the notion of the increasing gap between rich and poor, and what caused it, is much more complicated than presented by the current crop of politicians, all of whom have been feeding at the same trough for fifty years. Unless there's real systemic change the will of the people will continue to be unexpressed which, for the time being, could be a good thing, at least better than a bloody revolution.

Which one of the diners said , "Joan Didion is overrated"? We've got to know! It was neither a male or a female voice, and the umbrella over the table shielded the speakers true identity. Only later would it be revealed that it could have been either a man or a woman, as one of each had been dining together, making small talk at lunch. The tone of their voices were almost identical, though we'd soon discover that only the woman had a tattoo of a starfish on the back of her neck.

The sardine sandwich is to be savored at Coquine, a small restaurant in the Mt.Tabor neighborhood of Portland. The place makes its own Popsicles and is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.