It wouldn't be Portland if all things didn't eventually come back to liquor

The new book I have begun is a study of the street names of Portland. More specifically, the history behind those names. I have lived here most of my life, was taught little about the history of my city, so after writing my personal history book about the bars of the city, Shots of Portland, I have moved on to other historical aspects of this town.

I knew most of the names growing up here, but I never gave much thought to lives of those to which many of Portland's streets are named. For this entry, I start with someone quite recognizable, if only in name.

William Sargent Ladd, originally from New Hampshire, arrived in Portland in 1851, at the age of 24. He could not have predicted it, but this gentleman would eventually become the single largest landholder in Portland at one time.

Ladd's first 5 years after stepping off the ship were spent mainly in the liquor trade (shocker). The liquor business is good to him, and in a few years he eventually builds Portland's first 3 brick buildings. By 1854 Ladd expands into grocery stores. By the age of 27, Ladd is elected mayor of the city in 1854 at the age of 27. As his businesses thrived, Ladd would go on to help open Portland’s first Bank, Ladd and Tilton.

Ladd spent the next decade growing his business and family. A wealthy man by 1865, Ladd sells half of his interest in liquor business (perhaps to polish up his image? or just tiring of an industry he practically conquered before the age of 40?).

Ladd began purchasing plots of land on the east and west side of the Willamette River. Today, his most famous plot lies just off of SE Hawthorne, known then and now as Ladd's Addition. In its day, it was known throughout the state as one of the most attractive pieces of residential design most had ever seen... and seeing it is about most would ever be able to do. Ladd built posh homes, with back-alleys for privacy and to keep the cars and horse carts out of the streets within The Addition.

Platted in 1891 just after the first housing bust Portland had ever known, Ladd took what was then 128 acres of tract farm land and built upon it what is now the monument to the man himself.

Though it is rumored he never fully left the liquor business, Ladd overcame that stigma by the time of his death at age 91, in 1893.

Ladd's Addition rose to the height of luxury and comfort in the 1920's, when Portland specially allocated an electric street car line to run down Hawthorne and into the city. A ride that only took 20 minutes.

The next time you happen to hop a street car, or a MAX line, with perhaps your beverage of choice wrapped in a brown paper bag, give some thought to a man who in many ways shaped Portland into the city is has become.

A Summer Burnside Bar-Walk

I lay on a bed in my one bedroom apartment. It is early July. My place is on King Street, one block up from West Burnside road. Once known as Skid Road for the fact that early loggers used to fall timbers in the West Hills and skid the logs down a path to river. The path eventually became a street when the timbers ran out. And then Skid Road transformed itself into Skid Row for the better part of the 1900’s, where fallen men drank themselves up and down the street.

The leaves on the trees outside my window sway in the evening breeze that always builds this time of night as the sun goes down and the heat from the city draws wind down from hills for several hours. A little known fact: living on the east side of the West Hills you never get to see the sun actually set, except in this time of year, when the Earth is still tilted enough to allow the downtown skyscrapers to reflect sunlight back upon the hills themselves. It is this sunset-reflection from the east that I witness as I walk out of my apartment to my first destination of the evening, The Ringside.

The Ringside bar is dark, brick laden, with waiters and bartenders dressed in the old fashioned "black and whites". It is a class joint, lit only by small candles on the tables and a few overhead lights that shine down upon the shelves of liquor. As a restaurant I hold their steaks in the highest regard, but as tonight is not for eating, I merely order a Manhattan, light a smoke, and stare at the ice in the glass.

Time passes, but the night remains young. Another Manhattan, and then I pay the tab and continue the evening down at the Kingston.

The waitress comes over and I order a Budweiser. On another night I might have been able to recall more about this old building, its upper windows now boarded up. But nothing comes to mind on this night. A sports bar today, the crowd here is more blue-collar, mixed with students. Sports bars have their place, but it isn't my scene, and I leave my bottle half full as I walk out the door.

Station number three tonight is the Marathon Taverna. Half-way between The Ringside and the I-405 overpass, and half way from upper class to lower. This bar has a flavor to it that can only be appreciated after dark. On this night the crowd is older, raw. Most are honest hardworking people, but there is the mixture of aged winos and stool rats that could have been decaying in the haze of smoke probably since the afternoon. I sit and order another beer.

Several beers and many hours later I find myself walking east through the heart of the modern Skid Row. The last bastion in Portland these days where the homeless, hapless, users, pushers, prostitutes and pimps still gather just off the side streets of Burnside.

On NW 2nd I sit myself down on the curb with a brown bag in hand and find myself staring at a brick facade with gold lettering that reads ‘Erikson Saloon’. On this very spot, over 100 years ago, August Erikson built one of the grandest bars Portland ever had. The Saloon took up two city blocks in it early days, and had a bar that boasted to be the largest is the world. It was known as The Working Man’s Saloon, and back in the day that is exactly who it catered to. The loggers, miners, sailors, and dockworkers that all migrated to this house of liquor, gambling, and entertainment. Erikson’s closed in 1981, at that time it had been cut in half, and was a mere shadow if itself. This sign exists as a memorial to the bar.

The sky begins to lighten in the early morning. I drop the bottle in the street. Hail a cab. Time to return to the empty apartment. My walk is over. The city moves on.

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.

Smoking Ban Progress into Existence for Portland Bars

For better or for worse, depending on your viewpoint, here is the latest from our legislature here in Oregon. What are your opinions, should we ban smoking in all bars?

Lapdances are a Consitutional Right for Strippers in Salem

Well maybe not yet in Multnomah County, but down in Salem and judge has weighed in his verdict on exactly how close is, well, it doesn't matter in his opinion... it is all free speech.

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.

A 25 Cent Coin Toss: Portland is Officially Named

Many probably already know this bit of trivia, but for those that do not know how Portland was given its name, it wasn't some type of deep, soul-searching process. Basically it was done on a gamble. Portland won, but had it not, we would have been given the name of Boston. Here is how it all went down (taken from the wikipedia article):

The city of Portland, Oregon began as a spot known as "The Clearing," which was on the banks of the Willamette River about halfway between Oregon City and Fort Vancouver. In 1843, William Overton saw great commercial potential for this land, but lacked the funds required to file a land claim. He struck a bargain with his partner Asa Lovejoy of Boston, Massachusetts: for 25¢, Overton would share his claim to the 640-acre (2.6 km²) site.

Bored with clearing trees and building roads, Overton sold his half of the claim to Francis W. Pettygrove of Portland, Maine. When it came time to name their new town, Pettygrove and Lovejoy both had the same idea; to name it after his home town. They flipped a coin to decide, and Pettygrove won.

The Mens Weekend - June 2007

Each year my friends and I take leave of responsibilities, family, and work and head to some place in Oregon for a week on our own. This year it was the Oregon Coast. 5 days of golfing, poker, blackjack and beer. We all lost our pink ladies by the 6th hole, but we found what is now our golf trophy for the coming years. We paid homage to the Chinook Indians, and we enjoyed awesome tri-tips and wine over the sunset above. As for the rest of the weekend, well that remains between the 5 of us...

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.

West Burnside: Logging the Skid Row

Typically when you walk down West Burnside these days it can be difficult to image that at one time, not too long ago, all of the West Hills lay barren. Loggers in the late 1800's cleared the Hills, and it was possible to view the naked dirt from the Willamette River to Council Crest.

I grew up here with my people referring to Burnside as Skid Row. Naturally I assumed this came from the congregation of down-and-outers who populated its street and sidewalks. In fact many attributed the name to the condition of the people surviving there. It was not until years later I learned that the origin of the name had a far more interesting story:

(Taken from this site)

This term, which is used to designate the area of town where conditions are poor, originated in Portland and other logging towns in the Pacific Northwest. When they were faced with the difficult chore of dragging felled trees out of the forest to the mill, loggers built "skid roads" – roads paved with "skids," usually railway ties or heavy wooden planks. The loggers discovered that the logs were far easier to move down the roads if the "skids" were greased, and the saying "grease the skids" became a popular metaphor to describe speeding up a process.

"Skid Road" also became associated with the part of town where the loggers typically lived. These areas were characterized by bars and flop houses. The "skid roads" were magnets for poor, often alcoholic, transient workers, said to be "on the skids."

Burnside Street, currently Portland's busiest street, was used as a skid road. Loggers would "skid" logs down Burnside and load them onto boats on the Willamette River. Over time the term "skid road" became "skid row."

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?

"Portland is the most oversaturated strip-club city in the world"

As if those of us here did not already know this. The WW had an article this week highlighting one of Portland's more nefarious industries. Say what you like about them, women and liquor have gone together for over 125 years in this city. It isn't anything new.

Back in the late 1800's the area north of Burnside, known then as just "The North Side", was full of bars and taverns catering to the sailor, miner, and loggers that transitted through Portland on their way to other locations. In many of the taverns and saloons it was much the same; liquor and gambling on the first floor, ladies for entertainment on the second. Erikson's Saloon, perhaps one of the most famous of Portland's history, actually allowed women to dance on stage on the first floor. However, due to the rowdiness of the customers, August Erikson surrounded the stage with electrical fencing when it became available (aside - this feature might have just been the icing on the cake for the movie, Roadhouse).

For many years, much of the money generated here bought alot of political influence in the city. And it was not until the clean-up that came in 1905 with the coming of the Lewis and Clark Centennial that Portland's image of rough, men-only type of town began to relax.

The first Gentlemen's club, as we know them today, was Mary's, began in 1965. Since then the industry has boomed, to over 40 clubs, and at least 500 bars. "Liquor and women, a good combination...", my slight adjustment to the lyrics of Kenny Rogers.

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...