The Micro-Brew Revolution and the McMenamin Brothers

The first Portland micro-brewery to open was the Cartwright on SE Hawthorne, by Chuck Koury. It sold a brand of home brew called Portland Beer. The micro-brew operated from 1979 to 1982, but it was eventually closed because the beer it produced was too inconsistent.

Koury was the first to show that beer could be produced and sold on a small scale. This attracted others to the idea of micro-brewing and selling their own brand of beer. Don Younger, the Widmer brothers, and especially the McMenamin brothers took this idea and gave birth to the Oregon micro-brew revolution.

In the decades since The Cartwright, the McMenamins have established their locations as some of the finest and most original establishments for eating, drinking, taking in a movie, or staying in a room for the night.

1983 - Brothers Mike and Brian McMenamin open the Barley Mill on SE Hawthorne Blvd.

1984 - Hillsdale Brewery and Public House is opened after laws in Oregon are changed to allow beer to be brewed on the same location as it is sold, this becomes the first successful brewpub.

1987 - The first theater-pub is opened in Portland, The Mission Theater. This becomes the McMenamins' company headquarters as well.

2007 - The McMenamin brothers continue to operate 54 brew-pubs in Oregon and Washington, and are in modern times the Northwest's most well-known micro-brewers of beer and spirits.

Timid Childhood Leads to Intriguing Discoveries as an Adult in Portland

I grew up in Hillsboro, but as a child never ventured much into the city. I was about 25 when I was first taken to the Mission Theater. I saw the movie Fight Club, enjoyed a couple pints of Ruby along with some nachos, and spent much of the time before the film staring around the place wondering how many other historical buildings there might be in this town that I have yet to visit.

Over the next few years, and now back from college, I settled into the city at an apartment on King Street, and began to venture out of those streets in NW, discovering all manner of bars and dives that became for me ritual pilgrimage each weekend.

Far from being the only renovated theater of the McMenamins, The Mission still has a unique charm, but its history is much less charming, than intriguing... in its transformation from church to union hall to movie theater. I could have researched the history and wrote about it myself, but the historians from McMenamins did a much better job than I could have hoped with this piece.

Does anyone out there have any experiences worth sharing about their discoveries in Portland?

Huber's - The History Behind the Bar

Huber's was established in 1879 at the corner of First and Morrison as the Bureau Saloon. Its first proprietor was W.L. Lightner. In 1884 Frank R. Huber was hired as bartender. Mr. Huber had tended bar in Portland for many years. In 1887 Frank Huber became a partner with W.L. Lightner at the Bureau and the following year became the sole proprietor.

Jim Louie left his home in Canton, China at age 11 and landed in Portland in 1881. He found work in a bakery, then later worked at the old Peerless Saloon on Alder Street before going to work in 1891 for Frank Huber at the Bureau.

In 1895, the saloon was moved to Washington Street, the name was changed to Huber's, and it became the favorite saloon of the downtown businessman. Huber's moved to its present location, then called the Railway Exchange Building, in 1911.

With the coming of the Prohibition Era in 1920 plans were made to close the bar. But at the urging of Huber's many patrons, Jim Louie decided to convert the saloon into a restaurant. Although Huber's was primarily a restaurant, it was also a speakeasy. Manhattans were known to be served in coffee cups.

In 1979, Huber's celebrated its 100th anniversary of continuous operation. The arched stained-glass skylight, the solid Philippine mahogany paneling, and the tile floor are original fixtures from 1911.

Huber's today is third-generation owned and operated.

Most of this passage was taken directly from the Huber's website.

The 1905 World's Fair - How it Changed Portland

To celebrate the Lewis and Clark centennial Portland businessmen and politicians grappled political power away from the saloon and brothel owners of the North side and began a city wide clean-up of 'illicit activities' such as gambling and prostitution. These activities were never meant to fully disappear, but by 1905 most were well-hidden from public view as the World's Fair convened in the city. Construction of new hotels and apartment complexes, along with the crackdown on vice in the North Side, meant that many who sought beer and whisky without the threat of violence would do so in the more upscale hotels located on the South side.

The saloons remained prosperous in the North side fueled by the working class men of the city, while the hotels of the South side catered to visitors, local businessmen and most of Portland's politicians.

Today is a different story. The remnants of the old North Side were first replaced with manufacturing and inventory warehouses. Later in the 1990's these buildings were renovated into high-end living and work spaces, known now as the Pearl District. The references to the North and South sides of Portland have virtually disappeared, and more often than not the city now divides itself between East and West, with the Willamette River providing the boundary line.

These photos were advertisements taken from old news clippings around the turn of the century for two of the better known hotels at that time in Portland. These hotels (along with a few others) for many years in the first-half of the 20th century, were the only place people could be legally served hard liquors. It would take new legislation and agreements with liquor distributors in the mid-century before hard liquor was allowed back into the city's taverns and bars.

East Bank Saloon and the World Series Sweep

In 1975 the Boston Red Sox were defeated by Cincinnati in the World Series. It was their second trip to the World Series since the curse of the Bambino began in 1919. Had I been old enough at the time to drive across the Morrison Bridge in 1975, I would have noticed this vacant old building on the East side of the river, a brick mausoleum to past businesses that once occupied the site: a bank, a shoe store, a pharmacy, even a restaurant.

Built in 1896 by Nathaniel West, the same man mostly responsible for the construction of the Morrison Bridge, the East Bank Saloon was resurrected in 1978. The same owners run the Saloon to this day. This bar is a mixture of the old and the new. Original brick still line the walls, antique lamps and chairs fill both bar and restaurant. Yet the East Bank maintains this old world character while also existing as one of the best sports bars in towns.

In 2003 the Red Sox made it back into the American League Championship Series. Their hopes of reversing the curse were dashed in game 7 of that year. When their last out was made, I watched a young man, perhaps of Boston decent, slam his fist into one of the brick walls out of sheer agony for the loss of his team, breaking his hand in the process.

In 2004 I happened into the East Bank for Game 4 of the World Series. There again was this same young man, and on this night that same fist was clenched around a bottle of Bud while screaming and high-fiving everyone in the bar, including myself. The curse was lifted as the Red Sox won the series that night.

While watching the celebration in Boston on the television, and the celebration that surrounded me, I felt neither one way nor the other about the winner and the loser of that series. I simply sat in my booth by the window watching the cars pass down Grand Avenue.

I wondered to myself, if Lovejoy had won that coin toss back in 1843 instead of Pettygrove, and this town has been given the name of Boston instead of Portland, would I have been more excited for the Red Sox on that October evening?

Other recent articles:

Hesitation, Cognac and Consequences at the Sapphire Hotel

Wishing for More than Kells Could Serve

The First Strip Club of Portland

A Little History Behind Paddy's

Welcome to Paddy's. The building was originally called the Power Building when first constructed. Later in 1888 the 3rd and 4th floors were added as a hardware store. In 1940 the bar became known as the Harbor Bar, and was primarily a gay brothel for many years.

The Harbor bar came with a mezzanine, but in 1979, Richard Stuman, the owner, got rid of the mezzanine. The booths around the windows are actual church pews, but from which church is not known.

The bar inside has two fiberglass pillars that are replicas of the pillars outside of the bar. The bar wall hosts 400 types of liquors. Drinks and food here are guaranteed fresh – due to the fact that this old bar cannot contain a refrigerator large enough - all the better for the customer.

Some Posts from the Past

Another week out of town, another week without posts. Back in seven days. If there is anything about the bars in Portland that you would like to know, that you haven't found so far in my posts, let me know.

Here are some re-posts for new visitors to my blog:

--> Relieving yourself in old Portland

--> What Icons do you find around the city?

--> A shot of history

--> My first time

--> Drunk Driving

Hesitation, Cognac and Consequences at the Sapphire Hotel

The Sapphire Hotel. It’s an intimate restaurant with a small bar in the back. In the late 19th century legend has it a wise and lovely Indochinese women migrated to Portland from Canada. On this present location she established a warm and exotic environment where only invited guests were allowed for an evening of dining and entertainment. Knowing the right person, or being the right person, and with of course ample cash on hand, an evening at The Sapphire was an experience unlike any other brothels of its time. Providing fine dining, good wine, spirits, and of course beautiful women, many men came away from an evening at The Sapphire with memories that never faded.

As homage to it historical past, The Sapphire is decorated in oriental paper lamps, dim sconces, candlelight, and amongst the upper rafters antique bed stands and bureaus that purvey the atmosphere of the brothel now past.

It was in the modern Sapphire Hotel where I had taken a woman I happened to have been dating for several months. We had met one night downtown at another famous Portland bar, the Shanghai Tunnel. We exchanged numbers. This led to late-night phone calls and eventually a couple of dinner dates. An attractive girl, a few years my junior, we shared much in common. I enjoyed her laugh, and her quick wit and dry humor. Relationships however can be a mystical thing. Sitting across from her and sharing an appetizer, I felt the duality of a head that told me she was something special, but my heart did not seem to equally share in the enthusiasm. To this day I cannot explain why people do, or do not, fall in love. Call it pheromones, chemistry, kismet, or what ever label you wish to apply. You know love when you feel it, not when you think it.

It was before the dessert that I excused myself to wonder up to the bar to order myself a cognac, and for her espresso. It was at the back corner bar, standing there waiting for my drinks, that my eyes were trapped by a striking woman of green eyes and cropped, dark hair, sitting with two of her friends on the opposite side of the bar. Chemistry, or maybe pheromones, I cannot explain it. At that moment my heart came with fire, and while we stared at each other for only a few moments, and as cliche as it will sound, time hesitated. The bartender placed my drinks in front of me but I was not paying attention. She mouthed the word ‘hello’, and I likewise fumbled to say the same back.

Life is peculiar. There are rules that we follow. We follow some of them out of survival and necessity, and others we simply follow without every questioning why we are supposed to behave in such odd manners. Life is what you make of it, each moment you have a choice. As I reached for my drinks, I glanced up one last time at this women with green eyes, soft, rounded shoulders in a black dress and thought about what choices I could make right now, right in that moment. I could have walked over, asked her name, gotten her phone number. I could do this. I could make this choice.

Back at our table I handed my date her espresso. I slunked down in my chair, roiled the cognac around the glass in my hand.

Later I rose from the table that night at The Sapphire with my date. I walked to the door, catching a fleeting glimpse in the large wall-mirrors of this women looking back at me.

Many men once entered this building under different circumstances back in the day, but I couldn’t help think about how always history repeats itself. I never saw the green-eyed women in the black dress again, and weeks later I stopped dating the girl I was with that night.

What could have been, and the choice I made, still linger with me. The Sapphire Hotel has made memories for many men that last them their lifetime, but those memories are bittersweet. Perhaps it is not the head that cements regret into us, but rather the ache of a burning heart, intentionally extinguished by unwritten rules we choose to follow.

Wishing for More than Kells Could Serve

The first bar I ever legally gained entrance to once I finished college and moved back home was Kells. I had never been to a proper Irish pub and the wall of scotches and liquors was impressive. Kells has been a stalwart of the bar scene on SW 2nd for years.

Kells is a study in dichotomies. On the weekends, and being young, this is the ideal place to meet young people who also seem to have just entered the real world. But if you look closer, as I happened to one night, I noticed also the intermingling of those who, much older, had experienced some of the real world already.

Often they sat alone at the bar or in pairs in the corner booths. One particular gentleman, dressed to the nines in a tailored suite, patiently nursed his drink and scanned the crowd. His face gave a look of a man forgotten, lost, and out of place. A man who probably once entered this bar much like I had on this night, the world in front of him, all things known and assured of himself and the place he would take in this world. But tonight, his face could not hide what I saw, a man still searching for his place in the world. A man seeking to forget that as we grow older, we know less than we ever thought we knew when we were so much younger and self-assured.

While my friends laughed, shared drinks and shots and beers, the lonely man with the tailored suit looked on. I don’t know if he believed in God, but I imagined that he and I shared our own belief in our own fear of living and dying a life too ordinary. I was 22 years old, and I began to wonder if I someday found myself in the same place as this man, could I at least take pride in owning a good suit, if only having lived a life too ordinary?

The Evolution of the Ash Street Saloon

You may have wandered by it. May have even caught a band playing there any night of the week. To me this place epitomizes your typical local bar for bands, loud, old, grungy, and full of people downing beer after beer.

But there is a history to the place. Before the Ash Street Saloon started in 1994, it was a Korean Restaurant, before that a Mexican joint, and long before that it was a bookstore, and sometime around that era a barbershop as well. The place has worn many faces.

There was a restaurant called Hesse’s Café in the 1915 and 1930s next to it, they used to pass out tokens for meals to all the sailors and port workers. It also had a card room in the back that few knew about.

But it all started as the Bickle Building, built in 1885. This was where the Portland City Council would meet up stairs... below was a confectionary (candy store).

Small Anecdote to all this history -- Across the street is the Multnomah Hotel (now an Embassy Suites)… in 1905 a bi-plane took off from the roof (that was a 60 foot runway they say)… in 1996 (likely at the opening of the Embassy suites) the stunt was re-enacted.

The History of Beer in Portland

This is a great overview of the brewing history in Oregon(thanks to TravelPortland):

Beer Media Kit
The History of Beer in Portland

1852
German brewer Henry Saxer settles in Portland and opens Liberty Brewery.

1856
Henry Weinhard, a young German immigrant, moves to Portland. With a partner – the aptly named George Bottler – he establishes Portland's second brewery, City Brewery.

1862
Saxer sells Liberty Brewery to Henry Weinhard.

1864
Weinhard buys Bottler's interest in City Brewery in what is now Portland's Pearl District. (The modern Blitz-Weinhard Brewing Company, Inc., operated at this site until 1999.) Henry Weinhard's lager becomes famous throughout the Northwest and is shipped as far away as China and Siberia.

The complete history up to 2007 is here.

The Other Bar by the Crystall Ballroom

Cassidy's was established in 1979, and the bar and restaurant still prides itself on high quality service and the some of the most knowledgeable bartenders in the city. It is among the top favorites of locals.

Though the city ordinance requires all bars to stop serving at 2am, last call at Cassidy's typically occurs around 2:30am all nights of the week.

History about the building and much of the bar was difficult to come by, as I think the owner thought I was scamming him when I asked to take some pictures for my book. He allowed the pictures, but I was not able to get in contact with him later to show him the finished product. Sometimes it goes that way...

Uptown Billiards - The Bar Where John Wayne Drank

Pool halls still exist within Portland. But on the south end of NW 23rd there exists a small door with steps that lead to a somewhat hidden establishment unlike any other in the city. Perhaps not the most infamous pool hall to ever grace Portland, but absolutely one of the best modern pool halls in the town today.

The bar itself was built in Belgium, and sent around the Cape of South America to San Francisco before the turn of the 20th century.

In 1908 it was put on a stage coach and moved to Paisley, Oregon. Then in 1936 it was put on a flatbed truck and moved from Paisley to Redmond, Oregon. After a well-used existence, in 1994 (and much to the objection from the residents of Redmond) the bar's current owner loaded it onto a U-Haul and brought it to Portland.

In times past, it was customary for bartenders to throw their small change up on the bar at the end of the night. When the bar was detached from the wall in Redmond, people heard lots of clanking from within. They filled two containers with coins dating as far back as the 1910's, including steel pennies, mercury dimes and even a couple liberty half-dollars.

A resident of Redmond told the owner, before she hauled away the bar, that John Wayne once sat at this very bar. Apparently The Duke was filming a movie in central Oregon (most likely this would have been the famous 'Rooster Cogburn', in which Katherin Hepburn co-starred), and this bar was where he spent most of his off-hours passing the time.

Brasserie Montemartre to Re-Open

It appears that those of us wondering if the Brasserie Montemartre would ever re-open again have some good news. According this article in the Oregonian, renovation on the bar has begun. The upper floors are also being renovated into housing of some type. Condo's I would assume.

The First (Topless) Strip Club of Portland

Mary's Club is practically a landmark in Portland since its inception back in 1954, and its addition of topless dancers in 1965. Now Mary's wasn't going to qualify for my book, and this blog isn't about Portland's many "academies of dance" - of which there are many. Still, I liked the grittiness of this shot, and if you haven't been inside, well, some things just have to be experienced.

Which brings up the question: Does Portland have any successful blogs out there devoted to these unique establishments? I know there must be, but I haven't seen one (or rather I have not spent time actively looking)... some one please make a liar out of me. Seems like an easy way to make some coin in this town.

A Little bit of Chicago in Sellwood

Many years ago, the southeast area known as Sellwood was the most populated area of Portland (more populated than Portland itself was at that time). The Sellwood area featured a racetrack, and an infamous bar called the Whitehouse (known for its gambling and prostitution), just off of what is now SW Macadam. The street of Macadam derived its name from the early process of road paving, known as macadamizing. This was the first paved road in Portland near the turn of the 20th century, and tales abound of men racing their horse-pulled buggies down this road to The Whitehouse; an early form of drag racing I suppose.

Within Sellwood itself stood a bar known as the Leipzig, and for years this was one of many watering holes on the southeast side near the bridge. Years later, the original owner would sell the Leipzig to its current owners, with one caveat, the Leipzig sign was to remain, and so it does to this day.

Today the attached restaurant is known as Geno’s. The bar inside was salvaged from a Chicago warehouse by the current owner, and adds a more authentic old-world touch to the atmosphere of the bar (the brass seal from the manufacturer is still on the bar today).

The legacy left behind by the original owner, the Leipzig sign, often makes me consider what drives men to want to create and perpetuate legacies.


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Father's Day: Give the gift of Portland from a different angle

Just reminder that Father's Day is just around the corner. If you are looking for something out of the ordinary to give Dad about the city of Portland, why not my book, Shots of Portland? The prices have been reduced, and there are only 4 weeks left!

The Freemason Lodge that Serves Liquor and Culture

Tucked away on the east side of Portland on Stark Street you will find a small strip of businesses. One of the buildings occupying this block is a split level bar known as the Goodfoot (a James Brown reference no doubt). Upstairs you find a pool hall with classic pinball machines in the corner. After 8pm each evening the downstairs will open all days of the week, hosting local musical acts in a basement atmosphere, where the candlelight dances on the tables and the blue-lit bar serves drinks throughout the performances.

For me, Portland is a city of transformation. Bars with music acts alone are all well and good, but the unique aspect of the Goodfoot is its Last Thursdays, where local artists display their works around the red felt tables that stand on hardwood floors once the domain of an old Freemason Lodge. Still today the faint markings of the t-cross and sextant can be seen on these floors, the symbol of the Masons.

After a couple of pints, and tilting one of the pinball machines, I settle into a corner booth on the upper level to purvey a scene of locals that drift in between the pool players, drinks in hand, eyeing the paintings hung on the walls that surround the pool room.

A variety of people live in this neighborhood, many appear to be local. The First Thursday crowd of the modern Pearl District are nowhere to be seen. I find myself asking, is this a place where art imitates life, or life imitates the art? Music from a bass guitar riff rumbles against the wood floor as the band takes the stage below. In a bar full of people, I am left alone in my corner, at yet with no one at my table, I feel oddly at home. The Goodfoot represents all that is wonderful about Portland. This place doesn’t simply want to just cater alcohol to its customers; it offers a voice in Southeast Portland. Part art gallery, part social gathering place, part musical display.

The Goodfoot has its own personality. In my booth I hear its voice asking me, “What do you have to contribute?” And my response, is nothing more than to take a mental snapshot of a new breed of bar, and reply back with, “Do you think I have it in my soul to become a new breed of man?” The answer returned is silence intermixed with the sounds of cue balls, clinking glasses, and snare drums from below.

Bar as Time-Machine in N Portland

As a child I remember watching re-runs of the 70’s World War Two television series, The Black Sheep Squadron. Loosely based on the real life Marine VMF214 fighting squadron led by the infamous Gregory “Pappy” Boyinton, the television show became much of what I identified with life during the war on the islands as the military hopped from one piece of rock to another in victories over the Japanese air and naval fleets, until the final invasion of Okinawa and the eventual dropping of the bombs. From this television series as a child I visually stereotyped typical mess halls as boarded-up shacks and small dusty buildings with bamboo siding and thatched roofs. Places where beer was served that only contained 3% alcohol, and finer liquors were left to the smuggling and fermenting ingenuity of the men in the field.

According to my grandfather who served in the second war and was part of the invasion of Okinawa, the safer locales of Honolulu and Oahu had many drinking establishments that featured this typical Polynesian decor of bamboo and fishnets, much of what I associate today with your typical Tiki bar.

Back in the 1800s the Alibi was established along the dirt interstate road in North Portland. Then known as The Chat and Nibble, it provided a horse-and-buggy stop for those on their way to or from Portland. Much later in 1947 Roy Ell bought the business after spending some time in the Hawaiian Islands and retrofit the decor to match that Polynesian style which remains today.

Tiki bars are not common in the Portland area, and thanks to recent developments of the light rail this historic bar with the flashing Alibi sign in twinkling lights has become one of the more well known bars in Portland.

Dark, tropical, and impeccably decorated in the Polynesian fashion, not only does the Alibi offer any variety of umbrella drinks and a host of colorful and loyal locals, it also offers me a chance to imagine a foregone era that I am too young to properly appreciate.

As I have never been to war, never picked up a rifle, and have never been placed in harms way, after downing a few cocktails my mind will turn to thoughts of what life must have been like for veterans of the Pacific War like my grandfather, and what an oasis these lone thatch-and-boarded bars must have offered to the fighting men who put their lives at risk so that my generation could nestle into a booth next to neon dancing hula girls and order Mai Tai’s and Rum punches.

For me the Alibi is more than a bar, it is a time machine. Certainly more ornate that anything that existed during the war, it still provides a reminder of the sacrifices my grandfather made during his call to duty, and it makes me grateful that when I finally walk out the door in the evening, with that twinkling Alibi sign above me, the worst thing I will face the next day is rush hour traffic and the evening news.

My first commercial photo at Southpark

About a year ago, while I was running around like a mad man gathering photographs and content for my book, I happened upon the bar at Southpark. After the owner saw my photographs, she purchased this one (the second one down on the page) for her website. I was proud of that shot. I believe the bartender in the pic is still there. I reccomend to all to drop by the bar on a late evening, it is a great place for quite atmosphere and first class drinks. And if you're into wine, they have quite the cellar selection.