Oregon Humanities

Experiencing Portland

Dill Pickle Club puts Portlanders in touch with their city

Eric Gold

Outside the Metro offices in northeast Portland, thirty people boarded a powder blue bus named Cool for a tour called “Where Does Garbage Go?”—part of the Dill Pickle Club’s City Works series that also included tours of Portland’s water, urban planning, news, justice, and river systems.

The nonprofit club, founded in 2009 and named after a Chicago Renaissance freethinkers’ hall, seeks to broaden knowledge of Portland’s past, present, and future. The group organizes experiential learning tours, lectures, and publications for its members and the public. “A great way to learn about a place is to travel through it,” says founder and director Marc Moscato.

The tour stopped at a Metro waste transfer station, construction materials recycler the ReBuilding Center, and Recology in North Plains, which collects scraps from the city’s new food waste recycling program. Participants asked questions, such as what Recology does about rats (not a problem; vermin are put off by the constant turning over of the waste piles) and whether, as on CSI, any dead bodies have been found at Metro’s facility (“No, but if you need somebody, call me,” the guide joked).

For most of us, says club member Julie Parisi, garbage “ends at the sidewalk. I wanted to see, and even smell, what it was like for it all to come back together.” Harry Stein (Dill Pickle Club member #2) says he learns from the questions as much as the presentations. “Very intelligent people go on the tours,” he says, “so the rest of us benefit.”