Trendy-Third is the nickname this street has carried since the 1990s, with a mixture of affection and self-aware irony, and you are on the most boutique-dense street in Portland. Northwest 23rd Avenue runs north from Burnside Street through the heart of the Northwest District, lined with independently owned clothing stores, wine bars, chocolatiers, bookshops, and the kind of specialty food stores that reflect Portland's obsessive relationship with ingredient sourcing. The commercial strip sits between two residential neighborhoods — Nob Hill to the north, Alphabet District to the south — whose streets are named in alphabetical order beginning with Burnside: Couch, Davis, Everett, Flanders, Glisan, Hoyt, Irving, Johnson, Kearney, Lovejoy, Marshall, Northrup, Overton, Pettygrove, Quimby, Raleigh, Savier, Thurman, Upshur, Vaughn.
The alphabetical street names were assigned in 1866 in a coin toss between two original land-claim holders, Amos Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove — both names preserved in the street grid. The Lovejoy and Pettygrove fountains further downtown commemorate the founding partners and the coin flip that gave Portland its name, with Pettygrove winning the toss and naming the city after Portland, Maine, his home city.