Bryon Beck, a writer for Willamette Week tells AM Northwest the best places to go in the city of Portland!

• Best Place to Get Your Dharma On: Portland's Maitripa Institute has mysteries of Tibetan Buddhism. Since it opened in 2005, it has been bringing to town renowned Tibetan teachers and reincarnated lamas as they try to preserve their spiritual heritage against the Chinese occupation of their homeland.
• Best Non-Whippit Use of Nitrous Oxide: What's a screen printing business's do to get buzz? Take an old lawnmower, add a nitrous tank, and film it pulverizing stuff. Callie's Kustoms in Cornelius will put any ting on a t-shirt, and their hot rod designs are indeed rad. Mowzilla effortlessly shreds items including a pine tree and a 25 pound turkey.
• Best "Foam" Chugger: Maynard Orme, the former president and CEO of Emeritus of Oregon Public Broadcasting is talking about how its unknown reputation as "best foamer." A "foamer" is someone who "foams" at the mouth whenever anyone brings up the subject of trains. Orme's love affair with this style of transportation started 65 years ago, at the age of five. 
• Best Sister Act: Portland's Two Tarts know that size matters. The Tarts in question are sisters Cecelia Korn and Elizabeth Beekley, a pair of crumb pushers who credit their sweet chops to growing up baking in the claustrophobic confines of an 11-child family. Their tiny cookies can be found at the Saturday Portland Farmers Market as well as the Wednesday Park Blocks and the Thursday Ecotrust outposts. Their Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies are spiked with spicy candied Ginger. Cinnamony hazelnut linzers burst with marionberry jam, and the pea but butter creams are delicious. Though they currently sell their cookies to Busy Corner and PastaWorks, they are looking for a storefront.
• Best Bada-bing Bread-Baker: Dave Dahl, the burly ex-con behind the hearty whole grains of Dave's Killer Bread. Although the bread--an increasingly visible line of moist organic loaves with names like "Rockin' Rye" and "Good Seed"--plays on Dave's jailbird past with tongue-in-cheek illustrations of nuts n' grains in the clink, and his impressive criminal record is extensively recounted on this website.
• Best Live Coffee Show: Din Johnson's one-man show at Ristretto Roasters (3520 NE 42nd Ave.). Johnson is no stranger to stealing the spotlight. But the real star of this performance is the eight types of medium-roasted beans pouring out of his steel Probat roaster. Nearly every weekly from 6 to 10am, java voyeurs can catch all the action courtesy of the Plexiglass wall separating the coffee maker from his caffeinated people.
• Best Reason to Never Get a Real Job: Designer Jen Neitzel started the DIY Lounge (1639 NE Alberta St.) two years ago as a forum to teach and learn new skills for reusing and reconstructing one craft and fashioning another, a core component of the "Portland Mentatlity." The Lounge offers workshops in everything from encuastic painting to monotype printmaking.

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