Distilled Publishing -- on Vacation

I found out today that although Powell's Books loved the book and definitely wanted to have it in their bookstores, I am still going to have a challenge meeting their prices given that I am a self-publisher.

As with other bookstores, it has never been a question of the quality of the book or its content, but the price I can offer it to them. Self-publishing doesn't make it easy for the little-guy to break into major retail bookstores. But I am still working to find an alternate publisher (anyone know of any here in Portland?)

The book will remain available through the link here on this blog at the lowest price I can offer. In the past two weeks I have sold more than in the past month, so thank you to those who made those purchases!

For the next week I will be out of reach of the Internet, and most importantly out of reach from my day job. To everyone out there have a safe and relaxing Memorial Weekend. Be back in a week.

The Road Less Traveled to the Horse Brass

Some people are content within the herd. Others are driven by forces within to stray in their own directions.

If you walk far enough down SE Belmont you will come to the Horse Brass Pub. An establishment dedicated to maintaining the true feel of the modern English pub. I sat one early February morning watching football (European, not American) and sharing snifters of aged scotch and cigarettes (for over four hours) with a man who strayed from the herd, the owner of The Horse Brass, Don Younger.

In that morning I learned how the micro brew revolution started here in Oregon back in the 1970’s. A revolution brought about by a group of friends who were strays themselves, men who had the idea of brewing and selling their own styles of beer at a time in which Oly and Blitz were the dominant macro brews of every tavern in Portland. These friends literally all lumped themselves into a car and drove from Portland to Salem to help change some of the antiquated liquor laws of Oregon that prevented the selling and distribution of self-brewed beers. In that car were gentlemen from what became the breweries of Widmer, McMenamin’s, Bridgeport, and of course Don himself.

Throughout the morning Don recounted his life, his failures with previous bars, and some carefully worded aces (a la Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”) on what makes a man successful, in life, and in business.

As a stray, perhaps that is why his bar is located so far from the downtown area, or perhaps his love of England led him to a location that is geographically closer to those British Isles.

One of those solid “Aces” of advice made it into my book, Shots of Portland. Others will be posted here in the near future.

A Shot of History

This month I would like to thank all of those in Portland who have purchased a copy of the book. Due to many requests, I am also offering the book in a standard size, along with the current deluxe size. Click on the links below for more information about the lower pricing of the standard size book. And thank you to those who are still helping to get the word out. -Distilled Publishing
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Walking around Portland it is relatively easy to catch glimpses of the city’s past. Intermixed among the glass-towers are the brick-and-mortar buildings from a century or more ago. The streets we walk on, and the trains we ride stand in testament to the many chapters in Portland’s history. In my book, Shots of Portland, I attempted to provide some illumination of this history, by using the lens of the bar and saloon culture that once served the citizens of this city. Below is an offering of information I gathered during my research for my book, some which I included in the book, and others I did not:

• In 1852 Henry Saxer established the first brewery in the city, the Liberty Brewery.


• In 1885 the Bickle Building was constructed. You might have been there if you caught a band lately at theAsh Street Saloon, which is located in the first floor of the building. When it was first opened this was where the Portland City Council convened.


• In 1888 Henry Weinhard, now owner of Portland’s largest brewery, offers to pump beer to the Skidmore Fountain via the fire department’s firehouses. Fearing people might poke holes in the valuable fire houses for their own personal taps, the city vetoes the offer.


• In 1895 August Erikson establishes one of the most well known bars of its time, boasting a bar that measured 684 feet in length.


• The term used to describe the mixing of gravel with sand and tar to pave a road is called “macadamizing”. Hence Portland’s first street is given the name, Macadam. Once completed, many men spent their evening racing their horse and buggies down this road to the infamous White House, a saloon known for gambling and prostitution located near the Sellwood Bridge.


• The Multnomah Hotel (now better known as the Embassy Suites Hotel on SW 3rd) was the site of a famous stunt pre-dating Evel Kineval. In 1912 a daring pilot assembled a bi-plane on its roof and flew it safely off the building, with a run-way of only 120 feet. The stunt was re-enacted in 1996.


• In 1910 the Seward Hotel opens as one of the most respected art-deco constructions in the country. Guarding the building above the top floor stand multiple robots (a feature most people today fail to notice). The Seward later become the Governor Hotel, and its front desk would later become the main bar where drinks today are served at Jake’s Grill.
  In 1912 the Mallory Hotel opens, and with it came the famous Driftwood Room. Now known as the Hotel Delux, the Driftwood serves to this day.


• In 1914 Oregon established the Prohibition of the sale of alcohol. Many bars and saloons shut down. Some survived by becoming juice bars (with speak-easies in the back). If you ever find yourself at McCormick’s on SW 1st, take notice of the large metal juicer at the end of the bar. This is the original from that time period, and is still used today. Prohibition in Oregon was repealed in 1933.

Of course this only covers the era leading up to World War Two. Future posts will cover the post-war decades. Any comments or questions about Shots of Portland? Post them here. Any pictures of older bars from the past? Please feel free to share them here!

R.I.P.: The Rose and Raindrop

The building that housed the Rose and Raindrop is long on history, and another chapter in that book was ended a few weeks ago when the bar closed its doors. In 2006 I had the opportunity to sit with the owner of the Rose and Raindrop, Tom Field, to discuss his bar for my new book. The following came from that discussion:

When first constructed in 1890 in what was then not officially Portland but the city of East Portland, it was the largest brick structure in either city. Over the years the building played host to a vaudeville theater, a nickelodeon, and a movie house in its lower floors. The upper floors had 36 rooms available for sleeping (and not much else). Under the building, there are a series of the famous old “shanghai” tunnels connecting the Rose and Raindrop to other old buildings in the immediate vicinity. But perhaps the most intriguing fact in the history of this building comes from the two large brick ovens that sit today in the building’s sealed basement. With large rusted-metal doors, the ovens stand in testimony to the crematorium that once operated in the building. The ovens were of course used to cremate the corpses.

At some point in its history, starting probably in the 1940’s, business in the lower floor exited the building and became nothing more than storage space for old junk accumulated from the various hardware stores along Grand Ave.

The day before the famous Columbus Day storm in October 1962, two brothers sharing the last name of Burns purchased the building. These brothers are likely familiar to many in Portland, known better for their Burns Bros. truck stops. The next day when the storm hit, the entire roof the building was blown away. The brothers spent many years reconstructing the building according to its old 19th century style. They added a brand new upper floor in 1977, remodeling the 36 sleeping rooms into 12 apartments. On the lower floor the junk was cleared-out and in the space was constructed a new restaurant and bar called Digger O’Dells, the first eating establishment in the building.

Come 1998, another famous brew man in Portland by the name of Don Younger (current owner of the Horse Brass, who I also interviewed for this book and will be expanded upon in a future Barfly article), along with Mel Hickman, took ownership of the bar and changed the name to the Rose and Raindrop – a name taken from the a combination of the city’s alter-name, the City of Roses, and the fact that Portland is known for its rain. The bar was later purchased by Tom Field and operated until 2006.

And as of this writing, rumor has it the rent was upped, and the R&R could not contend… so who had the cash to meet the ante? U.S. Bank, of course…

You can check out a preview of the first 15 pages of my book here. In the coming weeks (provided people want to read it) I will have more material about the drinking history of Portland and the bars that contribute to that history today. In the meantime, give this lowly author your thoughts on his book, the topic, or just the general state of drinking and book-writing in Portland. Until then...

Portland's Bar Book

This entry marks the beginning of the Distilled Publishing blog. Distilled Publishing, LLC, was founded in 2006. The first book we published is a coffee-table book about the bars of Portland entitled, Shots of Portland.

The book took the entire year of 2006 to produce. It is 118 pages of history, photographs, and anecdotes about some of the better known bars in the city.

The purpose of this blog is of course to help promote the book, but it time the hope is that the blog will become much more than just a marketing vehicle. Print on-demand publishing is gaining wide acceptace and is becoming economically sound. While I will continue to post content that was gathered for the book (but edited out due to length), I would also like to open up discussions for those interested in pursuing a collaboration with Distilled Publishing in other book projects.

Until the next post, feel free to check out the book (a preview of the first 16 pages is available when you click on the link above) and please let us know your thoughts.