Kerns, the neighborhood you are in, is one of the inner east side districts that occupies the territory between the major commercial corridors — between Burnside to the north and Belmont to the south, between the river and the 28th Avenue strip — and it represents Portland's residential inner-east fabric at its most unmediated. Kerns is largely a neighborhood of craftsman bungalows and small apartment buildings from the early twentieth century, populated by the young professionals, artists, and longtime residents who value the central location and the neighborhood's relative lack of commercial celebrity. The 28th Avenue corridor on Kerns' eastern edge has developed a dense restaurant and bar scene anchored by Ken's Artisan Pizza, Ken's Artisan Bakery, and a collection of wine bars and neighborhood restaurants that draw customers from across the city without quite achieving the national attention that Division Street received.
The Kerns neighborhood is also where many of Portland's food cart pods are located — the scattered collections of converted trailers that represent one of the more distinctive elements of Portland's food culture, a legacy of the city's progressive food cart permitting policy that allowed a diverse and entrepreneurial street food scene to develop starting in the 1990s. This is Portland between the destinations: essential, unadorned, and completely itself.