BAR PILOT - October 2009

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Drink or Treat

Halloween Spirits

Anyone have scary cocktail ideas?

Posted by: John Chandler on Oct 30, 2009 at 10:00AM Speech Bubble 9 Comments

Waiter! What’s this spider doing in my drink?

The backstroke! Har!

I’m going to a Halloween cocktail party this Saturday and I’ve been racking my cranium for the perfect drink to bring. Needless to say, it’s got to be scary. I seem to remember one year we did a “Witch’s Brew” sort of a thing, that consisted of two bottles of cheap champagne covered with a layer of sherbet, to give it a scummy, swampy look, but I think if we put our heads together, we can do better.

What I’m trying to say is, SEND ME YOUR HALLOWEEN COCKTAIL RECIPES! Right now.

I’ll start.

The Black Widow

Cream de Cassis
Vodka
triple sec
fresh lemon juice
Pomegranate juice
licorice strings

Two parts cassis, three parts vodka, one part triple sec, one part lemon juice, one part pomegranate. “Hey, what’s a part?” I can hear you exclaim. In an average cocktail shaker, figure you’ve got about eight parts. Come on, it’s not an exact science. Nothing’s going to explode. So pour your parts into a shaker with ice, shake for ten seconds, and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with licorice strings to simulate spider legs. Ooooh! Scary! When it comes to Halloween drinks, the fright element usually lies in a properly gruesome garnish. Roughly peeled radishes stuffed with olives make good bloodshot eyeballs, for example.

OK, drinking buddies, let’s hear your ideas.

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Tags: Recipes, Cocktails, Holiday Events

Out and About

Leapin’ Lizards

Dinosaurs see the future?

Posted by: John Chandler on Oct 28, 2009 at 10:00AM Speech Bubble 5 Comments

Anne Adams (right) lets her dinos do the talking as she works with a customer at the Hawthorne food carts. She’s already read for some very prominent Portlanders but feels it would be in bad taste to divulge names.

I wandered down to the food-cart enclave at SE 12th and Hawthorne last week and found my friend and former bandmate Anne Adams, who plays music around town as Grey Anne, sitting at a table in front of Whiffies fried pies. She had a spy light strapped to her head and was busy organizing a herd of colorful plastic dinosaurs in an ornate box labeled “Dino Tarot.”

“It’s not really fortune telling,” she told me between customers. “It’s more like a fun form of divination.” For a modest fee, Anne will provide a reading about romance, career, or just general circumstances, using her cadre of rampaging reptiles to represent universal forces at work. “She’s uncanny,” said one patron. “The dinos know all,” added another.

Anne told me she’s at the Hawthorne carts most weekends, late, and that she does happy hour at Crush on Tuesdays, and Sundays at Three Friends Coffee and Pied Cow.

As mysterious as a crop circle she appears and draws a crowd. Sadly, I have an irrational fear of fortune tellers (I’m convinced that my future is as follows: “A piano will fall on you next week. Don’t make any complicated plans.”) so I didn’t stay for a reading, but I wish someone had advised me not to eat an entire peanut butter and chocolate chip pie at Whiffies. It was hideously delicious and I lapsed into a calorie coma on the spot. And I’d do it again.

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Tags: Food Carts

Brew News

Cascade Gets Closer

A new Raccoon Lodge?

Posted by: John Chandler on Oct 22, 2009 at 10:00AM Speech Bubble 2 Comments

This is good news indeed. Art Larrance’s Cascade Brewing, which is housed in the Raccoon Lodge out on Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway, will soon be opening a new location that’s right in my ‘hood. The Cascade Barrel House, at 935 SE Belmont St, is shooting for a January of February 2010 opening, and most of its 7,000 square feet will be dedicated to barrel aging, blending, and bottling Cascade beers cooked up by master brewer Ron Gansberg. And there will be a pub on the premises, serving chow to complement Cascade’s excellent roster of beers.

Speaking of which, Cascade Brewing recently snagged a gold and a silver medal in the Wood- and Barrel-Aged Sour Beer category at the 2009 Great American Beer Festival (the largest commercial beer competition on the planet) for Bourbonic Plague, a Belgian-spiced double porter, and Vlad the Imp Paler, a Belgian strong pale ale, respectively.

I named Cascade’s Blonde Bock one of the best summer beers in town way back in July 2006, and I’m hoping this little beauty is still available, as it’s combination of lager sparkle and stiff Belgian backbone continues to haunt my dreams. I don’t get out to the Raccoon Lodge nearly as often as I’d like, and soon its tragically distant locale will no longer be an issue. In fact, I may have my mail forwarded there.

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Tags: Beer, Craft Beers

Rock the Clubs

Go-Go Garagefest

Scion event draws a crowd

Posted by: John Chandler on Oct 19, 2009 at 11:00AM Speech Bubble 7 Comments

Photo: Cammie Toloui

The trick to navigating Garagefest was planning your itinerary down to the minute.

View Slideshow »

An entire day devoted to fuzzed-out, three-chord 1960s-style bashing? Kind of. It became evident early on that Scion’s Garagefest was operating under a fairly spacious umbrella, from the Dirtbombs sweaty riff riot, to Goodnight Loving’s sweet, twangy trash, to Kid Congo’s Latin-fluenced sonic spook show.

Speaking of umbrellas, there was more than one occasion where a bumbershoot would have come in handy, as Saturday’s weather proved to be as unpredictable as the 40-odd bands playing at the four Burnside corridor venues. I got soaked waiting for the Dirtbombs, and re-soaked making a dash for a slice of pizza an hour or so later.

Honestly, I was a little leery of a corporate-sponsored fest. Besides hardcore punk and Scandinavian black metal, garage rock is probably the most snotty, anti-authoritarian musical idiom known to mankind. And I do have a complaint to register with Scion. The swag bags left a lot to be desired. Other than the earplugs, socks, and a little package of mints that I haven’t been able to open, everything else was car propaganda. On the plus side, the socks are quite comfy.

While the lines to get in to see big names like the Black Lips and Roky Erickson at Berbati’s Pan were ludicrously long, causing many to give up on the early side of Saturday night, the Satyricon and Someday Lounge were usually an easy fit, making the fest a golden opportunity to see some little-known acts, among whom were several pleasant surprises. Those Darlins, Goodnight Loving, and the Strange Boys all delivered memorable—and varied—sets.

Get a gander at our web-exclusive slideshow from Scion Garagefest and soak up the sights, sounds, and smells of a full day dedicated to no-frills, no-nonsense rock ‘n’ roll. Sadly, we failed to get pictures of the matronly prostitute who asked me for a date or the drunk guy from Florida that tried to bite me while I was waiting for a late-night burrito. I guess you had to be there. Note: You may notice a drop in quality from the early photos, shot by ace photographer Cammie Toloui, and those that follow, captured by my Sony digital. Still, I firmly believed I was a triple threat, just like Peter Parker: fighting crime, reporting, and snapping the pics.

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Tags: Slideshow, PDX bands, Music

Reading and Drinking

Las Vegas Lit

Book release for local lass is a sizzling soiree

Posted by: John Chandler on Oct 12, 2009 at 10:00AM Speech Bubble 8 Comments

Photo: Kerosene Rose

Magic Gardens is the name of Viva Las Vegas’s memoirs, and it refers to the infamous Old Town strip joint of the same name.

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Richard Meltzer (author, poet, Blue Oyster Cult songwriter): What are you doing here?

Me: I’m covering Viva’s party for the society pages.

Richard Meltzer: Hmmmph. Some society.

It was a very Portland cross-section of humanity—musicians, poets, strippers, and sundry riff-raff including myself—that crammed itself into Dante’s last Tuesday night. The occasion was the book release party for Magic Gardens, the spicy memoirs of stripper, writer, rocker, bartender, and cancer survivor Viva Las Vegas, a name that should be familiar to Portland Monthly readers for her recent entry in the pages of this very periodical. Most everyone present (except me, apparently) was dressed in old Hollywood-style finery, showing off in glittery gowns and crisply-pressed suits.

Like I said, the place was jammed and the wait for a drink tested my usual Job-like patience to the snapping point. But emcee Tres Shannon, the world’s most distinguished doughnut entrepreneur, kept up a lively stream of patter, introducing local notables like Storm Large, Pennie Lane, Courtney Taylor-Taylor, and Walt Curtis to the stage to read racy passages from Magic Gardens. There was also a performance by Viva’s ripping rock band Coco Cobra and the Killers, and a bevy of beauteous dancers, including the legendary Lucy Fur, tantalized us to distraction, which went a long way toward easing the pain from the eternal drink lines.

Take a gander at our web-exclusive slideshow of this auspicious event, shot by photographer Kerosene Rose.

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Tags: Slideshow, Night Life

Drinking Locally

Space Truckin’

Hawthorne dive blasts off

Posted by: John Chandler on Oct 09, 2009 at 10:00AM Speech Bubble 3 Comments

Photo: John Chandler

The formerly dingy dining area in the Space Room gets a space-age makeover.

View Slideshow »

If you put a gun to my head (and you will, trust me) and demanded that I reveal my favorite local dive bars, the Space Room would be on the short list. The snuggly booths, goldfish bowl-sized drinks, and atomic-age murals work as a healing balm on my weary soul. So when I heard that a face-lift was on the horizon, I kind of freaked out.

I’ve seen too many unique and eccentric old rooms transformed into bland, corporate lounges with zero personality. Dude, I can’t drink in a sterile environment! Fortunately, new owner Seth Leavens and I are on the same page. The main bar area is pretty much unchanged: the flying saucer lamps still hover overhead, and the cosmic art remains intact. Instead, Leavens had his design team make over the adjoining Brite Spot, also known as that dumpy little diner area that no one ever sat in. Now the room is opened up and the decor matches the rest of the place. Times 10.

The revamped dining room is chock-a-block with outer space accouterments, including Warhol-style alien paintings, alarming UFO newspaper headlines, and, of course, aliens. There’s a grand opening party tonight between 6–10. Drop by, have a bloody Mary, and help christen the new, improved Space Room.

Bonus! The menu now features breakfast served all day! It seems like such a simple thing, but many bars in town seem to have missed the memo. When you go out drinking, and eventually require a greasy pile of carbs to soak up the sauce, nothing, I repeat, NOTHING works better than eggs, potatoes, toast, and bacon. Get it? Got it? Good.

Get a sneak peek at the makeover in this web-exclusive slideshow.

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Tags: Slideshow, Bar Openings

Points of Interest

The Hole Truth

Dan & Louis’s subterranean secret

Posted by: John Chandler on Oct 07, 2009 at 09:00AM Speech Bubble 11 Comments

Down, down, down. Is this really where Dan & Louis’s deadbeat diners end up?

While tarrying over a delightful seafood salad and a pint of Sinistor Black Ale (it’s from Bend’s 10 Barrel Brewing, and quite a marvel) at Dan and Louis’s Shucking Room yesterday, my friend Lucy pointed out a curious little cranny. It’s a hole in the floor that seems to descend through hewn stone deep into the bowels of the earth itself. The bar manager happened by and said, “That where we put people who don’t pay their checks.” Ha.

As a card-carrying conspiracy buff and longtime X-Files fan, I ain’t buying it. I call upon you, my drinking buddies, to proffer some theories. What is the purpose of this mysterious wormhole and where does it go?

Dungeon? Laundry chute? Wishing well? Let’s hear your ideas.

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Rock the Clubs

Elvis Lives!

Dante’s throws a birthday bash

Posted by: John Chandler on Oct 02, 2009 at 11:00AM Speech Bubble 5 Comments

Photo: John Chandler

What a show! Elvis is a marquee attraction.

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Happy birthday John Schroder, he who is known far and wide as Elvis.

You know the bird: local color doesn’t get more colorful than Elvis. Schroder himself is a bearded, hulking street singer, who puts his heart and soul into interpreting the works of one Elvis Presley, usually at Saturday Market or some other warm-weather, open-air location. Physically there is no resemblance, but the dauntless Schroder has been belting out the King for more than a decade, occasionally getting a group together called Elvis’s Last Band to play at clubs.

Last Tuesday was the ersatz Elvis’s birthday, and Schroder’s dear friend (and mine, too) Jen Lane of BarFly magazine threw him a hopping little soiree at Dante’s, showering him with a battery of bands, a big plate of cupcakes, and party favors (the whoopie cushion will definitely come in handy). The festivities began with Schroder as a special guest on the Ed Forman Show, a live talk show hosted by local smart-ass Ed Forman, who commands the stage every Tuesday at Dante’s. Elvis appeared right after city councilwoman Amanda Fritz (who was rocking some glamorous shoes) and proceeded to slay the crowd with his amazing repertoire of Star Wars impressions. Note to Elvis: don’t ever do Jar Jar Binks again. Please.

Your humble narrator happened to be in two of the five bands on the bill so I got some commemorative snaps from this totally off-the-hook happening. Have a look—it’s almost like being there.

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Tags: Slideshow, Holiday Events, Elvis

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In his twenty-plus years as a roving journalist and his forty-plus years as a native Oregonian, Portland Monthly web editor John Chandler has developed an appreciation for a properly stirred cocktail, all manner of beer, smoky single malt scotch, and the odd moment of clarity. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy,” is his pet quote, and he’ll break it out whether the occasion calls for it or not. Rock ‘n’ roll snob, film geek, and cultural kibitzer, Chandler can usually be found perched on a local bar stool muttering to himself about “the good old days” when he was always on the @#$%&!* guest list. Approach with caution.

Follow him on Twitter. Email the editor »

Bar Pilot navigates from dingy dive bars to ritzy schmooze-and-booze affairs to brain-melting rock shows, and points of interest in between. Chandler will do his utmost to jot down keen observations, hopefully inspire a few barroom arguments, and guide his readers through another night on the rocks.

Tags: Art, Bar Culture, Bar Openings, Beer, Beer Festivals, Cheap, Cheap Date, Cheap Eats, Cocktails, Comedy, Craft Beers, Downtown Bars, Elvis, Events, Food Carts, Gin, Happy Hour, Holiday Events, Interviews, Live Music, Local Distilleries, Music, Night Life, North Portland bars, Northeast Portland bars, Northwest Portland Bars, Out of Town, PDX bands, Places to Go, Portland Chefs, Recipes, Rum, Sex and the City, Slideshow, Southeast Portland bars, Southwest Dining, Sports, Stumble Zone, Summer, Tequila, Vodka, Weekend Plans, Whiskey, Wine, pug-hua-hua

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BAR PILOT - October 2009

Halloween Spirits

Leapin’ Lizards

Cascade Gets Closer

Go-Go Garagefest

Las Vegas Lit

Space Truckin’

The Hole Truth

Elvis Lives!

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