NW 23rd Ave Interview: Camille Pandian of Reveille

This week I interviewed Camille Pandian, co-owner of NW 23rd Ave newest addition, Reveille.  Just opened, the shop features a variety of hand-selected vintage clothing along with beautiful, high quality, original clothing, shoes and accessories for men and women.  Read about the owners' backgrounds, their love for Portland and the inspiration behind the shops beautiful goods and decor at www.nw23dav.wordpress.com.

For a direct link to my interview with Camille, click here.

Find Reveille on Facebook and watch for their future website at www.reveilleshop.com for more info and online shopping!

NW 23rd Ave Interview: An update with Nick Dothée

Photo by Corey Bruce www.aislinncreative.com

I'm excited to share my newest interview with local Portland singer/songwriter Nick Dothée.  Nick was my very first interview for the NW 23rd Ave blog back in June 2010.  In the past eight months Nick has completed his first solo EP and started a few other projects.

As always, Nick was a pleasure to work with and I couldn't be happier to support his new and upcoming music.

The EP, My Own Devices, releases tomorrow, February 8th, on iTunes, Amazon and in select stores.  It is available today and always at nickdothee.com.

Read my full interview with Nick at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com.  Or for a direct link to the interview, click here.

Click here to read my original interview with Nick.

For a few more of my personal thoughts about Nick Dothée and what I'm excited about in his future, check out my alter-ego blog, www.thesegoodideas.blogspot.com.   For a direct link to the post click here.

I hope you'll check out the interview, Nick's website and his music.  And if you're in Portland, join us for his upcoming shows beginning in March.

Happy listening!

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Phil Geffner and Danny Cardoso (Part 2)

The second half of my interview with Phil and Danny, local restaurant owners in NW Portland is now posted on the NW 23rd Ave Blog!  Phil and Danny share how NW 23rd has changed in the past 25 years along with how their businesses have grown.  Find out about their business philosophies and commitments to family and food.

Click here for a direct link to part two the interview or visit nw23rdav.wordpress.com

 If you missed part one of the interview, click here to read it or check out my earlier blog post on the interview and the process of putting it all together.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Phil Geffner and Danny Cardoso (Part 1)

Usually these interviews are a piece of cake.  Send out an email with some questions, throw together a short introduction about the person, edit their answers for spelling, post.  That's it.  So when Phil insisted that we do his interview in person I knew it would be a little more involved than usual.  Then we threw Danny into the mix on top of that.  I ended up with a LOT to work with.  What was so overwhelming about it was not so much the quantity (although it did take me hours to transcribe the whole thing) but what was in there.  There was so much great stuff in this interview that I wanted to make sure I was doing it justice; I didn't want to just throw it together like usual.  So instead I did nothing.  For weeks I was paralyzed by the thought of working on this thing.  

As usual, I learned my lesson.  You just have to dive into it.  You decide that this has taken way too long to get done, you have to do it.  You sit down and start writing, you force yourself to get into it.  And before long, great things begin to happen.  Then you get excited about what you're doing and you actually want to sit down and do it.  It's a great thing. 

In the end though, I try not to put too much pressure on myself.  Maybe this interview wouldn't have come out the same if I had sat down and done it right away.  In fact I'm sure it wouldn't have.  Maybe it would have been just as good, maybe it wouldn't have been.  Maybe the weeks of procrastination, in which this interview was constantly turning over in the back of my mind, formed the way I thought about the interview and thus the way I wrote about it.  I suppose that's why they call it marinading.  

Regardless of how I got here I'm here now.  Part 2 is still to come, with a lot of insight and inspiration, the real heart of this interview.  But for now enjoy the first half of my interview with Phil and Danny, local celebrities of the NW 23rd neighborhood.  Get to know a little about their backgrounds, their sense of humor and how they got to where they are now.

Find this and past interviews at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com

For a direct link to Phil and Danny (Part 1) click here.

Thanks for reading!

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Scott Seibert

This week I had the privilege of interviewing Portland's 36th Rose Emperor, Scott Seibert.  Check out the NW 23rd Ave Blog to learn more about Scott, why he loves living in NW Portland and why the people of NW 23rd love Scott and don't even know it.

Click here for a direct link to the interview.
Thanks for reading!

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Komo Bains

Check out my interview with NW 23rd local Komo Bains!  

Find out what Komo dreams about, why he wants to make hair grow faster, and of course what he loves about Portland and living on NW 23rd Ave.

For a direct link to the interview, click here.

And as always watch for more interviews with great folks at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Cecily Stevens

Check out my new interview with Cecily Stevens on the NW 23rd Ave Blog!   Cecily is a super-friendly district manager with Goorin Brothers based out of the hat shop on NW 23rd and NW Johnson.  Originally from the Berkshires in Massachusetts, Cecily gave some great answers about who she is, why she moved to Portland and what she loves about NW 23rd Ave.  For a direct link to the interview, click here.  Thanks for reading!

 As always, watch for more interviews at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com.

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Josh Richardson

Check out my interview with the handsome Josh Richardson, OHSU PhD candidate and NW 23rd Ave resident.  Click here to learn more about Josh and why he loves living on NW 23rd Ave. 

As always, watch for more interviews at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com.

Peanut-Butter-Jelly Time

Check out my newest interview with the creators of PBJs Grilled Gourmet Peanut Butter Creations located on the corner of NW 23rd and NW Kearney.  Read about their vision for delicious grilled peanut butter sandwiches with everything from bananas to blue cheese to hot sauce to pickles.  It's brilliance on a piece of bread.

As always, find this and other interviews with NW 23rd Ave locals at: www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com.  Or click here for the direct link to the interview.

Go to www.pbjsgrilled.com for more information on PBJs.

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Tatiana Miletta

Check out my new interview with the beautiful Tati Miletta: newlywed, aspiring photographer, and long-time hostess of Papa Haydn on NW 23rd and Irving here.

Find out why Tati is so beloved by the NW 23rd Ave community and all that know her!

Watch for more interviews every Monday at:

www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com

NW 23rd Ave Person of the Week Interview

The first NW 23rd Person of the Week Interview is up!  Check out my interview with Nick Dothee here.

Thanks again to Nick for sitting down with me and giving me so much great material to work with. Thanks to Dave and the NW 23rd Ave Blog for letting me help out with your quest to spread the word about all NW 23rd has to offer.  

Interviews will post on Mondays weekly beginning June 28th. Watch out for them at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com

A Different Way of Writing

I was recently asked to write for a local blog that shares news and information about the NW 23rd Ave shopping district in Portland.  I was given full reign to contribute to the blog in any way that I desired, so I decided to use the opportunity to try out interviews.  It is a completely new form of writing for me but one that I have been wanting to take a shot at for a while.  So far, it has definitely been a learning experience. The questions are the easy part - just think up some basic questions, silly questions, questions about the interviewee's impressions of and experiences on NW 23rd - but introducing the person is different.  How do you accurately represent someone's story in your own words in only a few sentences?  How do you do justice to all the interesting things about them without going over the top?

My guide has been an excerpt from Ken Macrorie's Telling Writing.  Macrorie's mantra: 

"All good writers speak in honest voices and tell the truth."

Good writing is honest and authentic, doesn't waste words and shares with the reader the experiences of the writer.  My first interviewee put my ability to write this way to the test.

I chose to interview Nick in part because I see him regularly and could set up the interview quickly and easily; but also because he is a musician, so I knew he would have something to share and would be comfortable sitting down and talking with me.  Nick has a great personality so my expectations were high but he managed to exceed them.  Before he answered a few written questions I asked him to tell me a little bit about himself, his past, and his recent move to Portland.  He was incredibly enthusiastic and genuine about his story and I felt like I had to find a way to convey the experience that I had talking to him to the readers of the blog.  What came to mind, however, were cliches, not the truth.

To find the truth, Macrorie suggest writing continuously for ten minutes without stopping.  I think the point is that when you can't stop to think about what you're writing your mind can't come up with the cliches and the "great thoughts" that you might otherwise resort to.  Without the time to think, you don't have anything to draw from but the truth.  So I sat down and I started writing about Nick.

It worked, it didn't even take ten minutes of continuous writing before real, honest statements about what I had learned began to flow.  I began to discover what was really important about my interview with Nick and what it was that impressed me about him.  I really only had a few lines to write, but I think that I was able to express what was important to him and to me.

Thanks to Nick for being my guinea pig!  Check out the NW 23rd Ave Blog at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com and I'll be sure to share the interview when it posts.