Welcome to A Walk On The Weird Side – Mermaid Edition. For this adventure, the Barbie Corvette is staying in storage, and we are borrowing Cher’s mermaid car from the movie … Mermaids. You will also be issued a mermaid tail, shell bra, and trident.

The St Johns Neighborhood in North Portland is one of those neighborhoods I often kick myself for not visiting as often as I should. It’s a quirky little neighborhood with lots of history and nooks and crannies needing attention and frequent visits.

This month’s A Walk on the Weird Side is a request from a WPU reader named Carl. It makes me happy he reached out and suggested it because that means people other than my mom are reading this column. Not that my mom reading this is a bad thing, but she is required. Hi MOM!!

The Goose Hollow Neighborhood is one of Portland’s oldest neighborhoods with a rich sense of history and place. Remnants of the neighborhood’s history can be found on the sidewalks, MAX stations and art installations. For this trip to Goose Hollow, I suggest leaving the Barbie Corvette in the garage and taking the MAX as parking is at a premium. Tri-Met has a very informative guide to the art installations along the MAX lines and I recommend you pick up a copy.

Beside the occasional drug bust and abandoned meth house, ours is a fairly quiet place. The neighborhood is a mix of old and new construction. The houses behind ours are older homes with large, spacious backyards which are often the settings for loud, drunken social gatherings and forest fire-inducing bonfires. If you look at the grass in the southwest corner of our yard, you will see a small path leading from one fence to another. We call this the Kitty Highway and it is used by the neighborhood cats and trash pandas to get from point A to B.

In 2008, Forbes Magazine named the Rose City Park Neighborhood the 9th most overpriced neighborhood in the country. This comfortable neighborhood of mid-century homes plays host to plentiful bars, coffee shops, restaurants and a historic golf course. It is a warm and welcoming neighborhood to visit with plenty of iconic businesses and quirky finds.

If I were ever to write a gritty crime novel, I would set it in the Montavilla Neighborhood. Not because it’s scary, but because it’s very eccentric and very Portland. There are old classic houses proudly flying pride flags next to dilapidated crumbling homes with sheets for curtains. There are old apartment buildings that could easily be the setting for an intriguing crime novel where drug dealers, sex workers, flat broke college students (and an alcoholic P.I.) cohabitate together. Like a dirtier, sexier Tales of The City.

If Dr. Seuss were to design a neighborhood, it would be Piedmont. Each house my husband and I passed on our tour of this very walkable neighborhood was my new favorite.(Specifically in the Gainsboro Subdivision) There are hobbit homes, homes with turrets, bungalows, condos, homes where trolls probably live, homes for middle-aged goth children, factory workers and more.

Located east of the Willamette River, the Brooklyn Neighborhood snuggles up against Reed College and is home to popular attractions such as Edelweiss, Pok Pok Wings, Original Hotcake House and everyone’s favorite superfund site, Ross Island. Since most people know about those destinations, I’m not going spend any time on them, and instead feature some of the more interesting places worth a visit.

This adventure starts with my friends Rick and Janet. As transplants to the area, they have embraced the weird and unusual sights and neighborhoods in Portland and take newcomers on a tour called The Rick and Janet Alternative Tour. Their goal (and mine) is to go beyond the hipster attractions and donut shops and show visitors a different side of Portland’s history and businesses not often seen in the glossy travel magazines or online travel guides. When I was offered an opportunity to write for Weird Portland United, I immediately thought of Rick and Janet and modeled this piece after their tour.