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 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

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 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 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.

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.

Two for the road...

I just dropped off a couple copies of the book to former Mayor of Portland Bud Clark, (owner of The Goose Hollow Inn)who purchased them from me last week. Every customer helps, right? Thanks Bud!