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“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”

— Ansel Adams

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Drivel Starved Nation the time has come to unveil our plans for our 30th Anniversary bash. Listen up!

Thursday, August 15th
6pm -8 pm; The exhibition, “Quality is Contagious: John Economaki and Bridge City Tool Works” opens at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. All this proves is that I have been making stuff for 36 years, and includes several pieces of furniture and lots of tools—some of which you likely own! The reception will be held on the roof of the building (it is beautiful!). A selection of plated and passed appetizers, appropriate to the season, will be served in addition to wine and non-alcoholic beverages. The exhibition runs through January 18, 2014.

To commemorate this event, the book. “Bridge City Tool Works: 30 Years Through the Lens of Joe Felzman” will be unveiled at the August 15th opening. Here is a sneak peek of the cover;

 
Here’s an image from the book that is cool;

 

Friday, August 16th
10am -3pm; Bridge City Showroom and Skunk Lab Open House, non-alcoholic beverages, wine, and finger foods provided.

6:00 pm until ???
Book Party! This is a catered dinner for our customers and a chance to meet all those associated with the book. This will be a fun evening hanging out with Joe Felzman and Jay Maisel, who is flying in from New York City for the festivities. If you would like to attend this function, please RSVP Consuelo@bridgecitytools.com for further details. (Both of the above links are short videos and worth the time to view them)

Saturday, August 17
11am-5pm; Wine Tasting Through the Willamette Valley. We have arranged for a bus tour of the Oregon wine country. We will visit 4-5 vineyards and tasting rooms.The first stop will be Chehalem Wines, they make extraordinary Pinot Noir and their Inox Chardonnay is fantastic. If you have never been on one of these tours they are a blast. One of the buses is a double-decker! Cost will be $50 per person and space is limited, so please RSVP to Consuelo@bridgecitytools.com if you would like to take the wine tour. For those not interested in the wine tour, I suggest renting a car and driving east from Portland through the Columbia Gorge, turn right at Hood River and drive around Mt. Hood, stopping at Timberline Lodge for lunch, maybe ride the “Magic Mile” chair lift up to the snow fields (on a clear day you can see Mt. Shasta in California, about 400 miles away!) before heading back to Portland. To us locals, this is called the “loop trip” and it is jaw dropping.

Our hotel recommendation during your stay is the Paramount Hotel. It is only a couple of years old, very nice and affordable. For a couple of bucks, you can ride the MAX light rail from the airport and get within 2 blocks of this hotel. For those of you with female significant others, Nordstrom’s is a block away. Why would I mention that? Oregon does not have a sales tax. You will need to make hotel reservations yourself.
 
Couple of other tidbits; Seattle is a three-hour drive from Portland. Vancouver BC is about 5 hours. Crater Lake National Park (unbelievably beautiful place) is a 5 hour drive from Portland. (Oregon is a honkin big state). Both Mt. Hood (you can snow ski in August here) and the Oregon Coast are an hour away from Portland. Oh, no humidity and no mosquitoes or Mongolian Death Worms! It is a great time of the year to see the Pacific Northwest (we are located in the world’s largest temperate rain forest, which begins in northern California and ends in British Columbia). Other sites of interest include the World Forestry Center, and we are now famous for something other than topless bars and micro-breweries– our food carts. Lots of great restaurants and a conspicuous absence of most chain eateries–the food is great!
 
We hope you can join us! We might even have a little sale for those that make the trek…
 
–John