Portlander Marci Thornton-Smith, upon hearing about the Portland Songs project, wrote with a suggestion to do a song about VooDoo Doughnut.  I’d never heard of VooDoo, but now--having become familiar with it for “research purposes”--it’s obviously a great place.  I also grew up about a half mile away from Bagel Land, the delicious bagel place on 42nd and NE Fremont.  So this week’s song, “The Holiest Places In Town,” combines these two hole-y places into one song, arguing that if you want to find true religion, you’d better be hungry.

In case you don’t know either of these two places, here is how to get acquainted:

VooDoo Doughnut

Bagel Land

Lyrics:

The holiest places in Portland, Oregon are not our churches or our mosques.

They’re not our shrines or our temples.  They’re not even our synagogues.

Come on along, I’ll show you what I mean--

The holiest places that I bet you’ve ever seen.

When it comes to raising spirits, these places are the best.

There’s one on the east side, and one on the west.

There’s a place in northeast, near Beaumont Middle School,

Baking bagels so good that they’ll make you drool.

If you’re looking for a snack, but don’t have one in hand,

Then take yourself on over to Bagel Land.

There’s another place over by Saturday Market,

They take some dough and in grease they park it.

If you want a sweet sensation to make you go nuts,

Head over on MAX to VooDoo Doughnut.

These are the holiest places in town!

They don’t have a center, but still they are profound.

Though they’re many miles apart, they’re still on common ground:

Their gods are soft, their goddesses warm, and their deities all quite round.

The holiest places in Portland, Oregon turn out to be places to eat.

The Portland pantheon is so unique: this is what I call theology.