St Johns: Faces and Places

Pattie Dietz, 65 in July, owner
Pattie’s Home Plate Café and Fountain
8501 N. Lombard
Portland, OR
(503) 285-5507

When Dietz was a child growing up in St. Johns, her café used to be a Rexall Drug store. She’s spent most of her life here and still lives just seven blocks away.

Sean McFadden, 31, sales associate,
Blue Moon Camera and Machine
8417 N. Lombard St.
Portland, OR 97203
(503) 978-0333

In business since 2001, the Blue Moon was a photography studio before owner Jake Shivery (not pictured) turned it into a store devoted to what he calls “companion objects.” “Creative people really like to get to know their equipment,” he says, “and if you service these machines, [you] can use an 80-year-old typewriter and still have it work like it was brand new.” Shivery and most of the staff live in St. Johns. “The luxury of a pedestrian commute is very appealing,” he says.

L to R: Bob Leveton, 68 and Jerry Leveton, 72, co-owners and brothers,
The Man’s Shop
8511 N. Lombard St.
Portland, OR 97203
(503) 286-3514

The Man’s Shop has been in the Leveton family for 70 years, and the brothers have been working there for 50 of them. "My first job here was stuffing bags when I was 5 years old,” says Bob Leveton.

(Left-right) Ben Heiken, 32; Jon Stanley, 25; Kim Marquardt, 30
Proper Eats Cafe
8638 North Lombard Street
Portland, OR 97203-3731
(503) 445-2007

All the food this local grocery store and café sells is vegan and organic. Marquardt describes St. Johns as “a hidden secret, with a local drunk or two.”

Joe Flanagan, 26, manager
The Recyclery
8416 N. Lombard Ave.
Portland, OR 97203
(503) 289-2573

Flanagan bikes 14 miles to work from his home on SE Division. Though he’s only worked in the St. Johns store for a month, he transferred over from the Recyclery’s other location on 9th and Madison, where he worked for a month and a half.

Flanagan’s favorite Johns spots to grab a bite to eat include Proper Eats, “they make their own kambucha!” and “the Mexican restaurant down the street [Panaderia y Taqueria Santa Cruz], they have great pan dulces there for $0.60 and the Coke with real cane sugar, bottled in Mexico.”

Toby Tobiason, 66, owner
Vinyl Resting Place
8332 N. Lombard St.
Portland, OR 97203
(503) 247-9573

Tobiason runs this 13-year-old record store, just a 10 minute walk from his home, with his wife Pat Smith. He calls the business “his semi-retirement” after a career in public radio as a program director in Juneau, Alaska.

Sherry Zingg, 47, bartender
The Wishing Well
8800 N. Lombard St.
Portland, OR 97203
(503) 286-4434

Zingg has been coming to the Wishing Well since she was a little girl when her dad would bring her there for dinner. Though she’s only been tending there for a year all the other bar tenders are old-timers and other locals.

Justin Colwell, 37, owner and barber
Champs Barber and Style Shop
8738 N. Lombard St.
Portland, OR 97203
(503) 286-3333

Champs offers hot facial shaves and a full razor shave, which Colwell claims you won’t find much in Portland. “We keep it pretty old fashioned,” he says.

Heather Mayer, owner
Parlour-St. Johns
7327 N. Charleston Ave.
Portland, OR 97203
(503) 289-0830

The salon was formerly the storage unit for Signal Pizza right next door.

Kassidy Anderson, 23, pizza girl, Signal Pizza
8302 N. Lombard St.
Portland, OR 97203
(503) 286-2257

In business for four and a half years, Signal Pizza’s previous incarnations include a florist shop and gas station. Kassidy’s take on St. Johns: Community, quiet, beautiful, undiscovered, scenic.

Art Gilbert, 57, baker
Tulip Pastry Shop
8322 N. Lombard
Portland, OR 97203
(503) 286-3444

Tulip Bakery is a family affair. “My wife owns the place, we just run it,” Gilbert says of him and his son. In his wife’s family for over 60 years, Gilbert’s son John has been working there full-time with his father since he was 18.

The mural on the side of their bakery was painted by a local artist with the help of school kids in the Art Seed program at St. Johns Community Center.

Danielle “Danny” McCarthy, 24, server and barista
James John Café
8527 N Lombard St
Portland, OR 97203
(503) 285-4930

This three-year-old café and restaurant occupies what used to be the first bank in St. Johns. The bank’s vault now guards sugar, flour and other pantry items for the restaurant.
McCarthy comes to the James John for brunch even when she’s not working, and says of the area, “there are opposite things going on in St. Johns. There’s this amazing community of people and there are the Johns people, who really come out after dark.”

Ian Dawson, 24, barista,
Anna Bannanas
8716 N Lombard St
Portland, OR
(503) 286-2030

St. Johns has “got this strange dichotomy of older people who’ve been here for ever, and 30-somethings and new parents moving to the neighborhood,” says Dawson.

L to R: Kert Wright, 58, owner, and Sayuri Sasaki-Hemann, 29, Wright’s “right-hand man”
Sabi and Friends Vintage Home & Garden
8402 N. Lombard St.
Portland, OR 97203
(503) 719-6176

The building housing this antique store has been owned by the same family for three generations and has previously been a furniture store, grocery store and liquidation warehouse before its current incarnation. Wright moved her business to this location from the Killingsworth neighborhood a year and a half ago.