Photography by Shawn Linehan
Portlanders use their bikes to transport plenty of items – groceries, plants, kids. But Todd Gillies takes the two-wheeled-Sherpa concept to new heights.
One day in late April, for example, Gillies loaded up 100 pounds of rice on the front rack of his Peugeot, and hauled it from his Todbott's Triangles restaurant on Alberta Street to a storage space a mile away. As he was building the tiny eatery last winter, he picked up a 55-gallon plastic waste tank and a 35-gallon water tank from a distributor on East Burnside Street, strapped one to the front rack of his bike, one to the rear rack and pedaled back to the construction site in the Northeast.
And then there's the trip he took to the ReBuilding Center on Mississippi Avenue last December. He made a hefty lumber purchase – a set of wooden planks, each 12 feet long, seven inches wide and three inches thick – and somehow managed to belt it all to the poor Peugeot for the journey back to Alberta Street so he could finish his build-out.
"The secret about that one is I didn't ride," Gillies said. "I probably could have, but it was the one day last winter it was snowing really bad, so I just walked the bike back."
Pushing a lumber load through the chilly mush of a Portland blizzard probably isn't the image most restaurant owners have for themselves. But when 30-year-old Gillies established Todbott's at the end of last year, he committed to the idea of making it a car-free business. The shop's simplicity has helped him make the notion a reality; the 250-square-foot space serves only miso soup, tea and a delightful Japanese dish called onigiri, so it's not like he needs a car for constant Costco runs. However, even more important is the fact that Gillies simply enjoys all the transport riddles his business forces him to solve. "I mean, I guess it's true I'm helping the environment," he said. "But, mostly I just do it for the challenge."
Folks familiar with the farmers' market scene in town will probably recall Gillies' face. He spent four years selling onigiri – rice triangles wrapped in crispy seaweed and filled with different types of sushi – from carts he set up at the weekly Portland State University market, along with other events. Though he was working up to five markets a week and had an employee working below him, he couldn't bring in the kind of profits he wanted: "when the choice is between a tamale and a weird Japanese food you've never heard of," he said, "you're going for the tamale." What's more, the carts he had constructed weighed several hundred pounds each, so he had to tow them with – gasp – a pick-up truck. Eventually, he got sick of sitting in late-afternoon traffic on the I-5 and began figuring out a way to make his business stationary and bike-based.
He said the first half-year of business at the Alberta Street Todbott's, which is tucked away at the end of a gravel path between 28th and 29th avenues, has gone extremely well and he's already thinking about building another shop in Southeast Portland. As long as the food stays tasty and his customers know of his penchant for pedaling, other locales seem destined to succeed. "I think he's found a nice little niche for himself," said Mark Derby, who heads to Todbott's about once a week with his girlfriend. "The food is unique, and we're car-free people too, so it feels like we're supporting something that's really good."
When Gillies isn't whipping up triangles and balancing supplies on his handlebars, he's usually playing his fiddle. A regular at old-time Appalachian music jams in Portland, he also heads to fiddle fests and workshops around the Northwest in the spring and summer. Not surprising, he tends to show up on two wheels. "At this point, it's part of my persona,î he said. Would he ever go back to the world of pick-ups and traffic? "If I ever did get another vehicle," Gillies said with a smile, "it would be a motorcycle."
Dan Leif is a freelance writer and associate editor at Portland-based coffee magazine Fresh Cup. He enjoys riding through Northeast late at night.
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