Portland Spoke – The Official Blog of Travel Portland

True story: Radiohead’s Thom Yorke once wanted to be Jim Morrison. Well, at least that’s what the band’s frontman sang in one of their earliest tracks, “Anyone Can Play Guitar.” During Rock Band Tuesdays at Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade, not only can anyone play guitar, but they can also be Yorke, Morrison or one of hundreds of other musicians in the iconic video game.

Ground Kontrol is a video-gamers’ Valhalla, crammed with 90+ classic coin-op masterpieces ranging from Pac-Man to Dance Dance Revolution. Serving beer and wine in the evenings, it’s a great place to relive 8-bit memories and also hosts DJs, twice-monthly free play nights and tournaments, in addition to Rock Band Tuesdays. (more…)

This year’s Bridgetown Comedy Festival (April 18-21) features a weekend full of shows at venues across the city. The intimately set stand-up acts, panel discussions and other special events invade Portland’s quintessential nightclubs and stages, from Helium Comedy Club, which hosts acts year-round, to Hawthorne Theater, better known for its high-voltage rock shows.

The just-announced roster includes laugh legend Dana Gould — who’s been around since the ’80s and has written for The Simpsons, internationally renowned beatboxer/musician/comedian Reggie Watts and British comics Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, along with about 200 others. Whether you know their names or not, they’re pretty much guaranteed to make you laugh.

Photo by Marty Davis, Just Out

If Cheers is the bar where everybody knows your name, Blow Pony is the party where nobody cares what it is — so long as you’re dancing. Held the fourth Saturday of every month at Branx and Rotture in the city’s Southeast warehouse district, this four-alarm rager is like the inside of a piñata — colorful, fun, and explosive.

Started in 2007 as a place where “all our brothers and sisters felt welcome and loved,” the two-floor, hot and sweaty glitter-fest usually has four or five different DJs, mixing up a wide variety of music — basically anything with a beat. It’s a wild time where everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, race or gender, is allowed to be their deep-down self, whether that’s a wallflower sporting jeans and a T-shirt, or an outlandish dance queen wearing DayGlo panties and body paint. Be sure to get there early, and make no other plans, because at this monthly event, you’ll get to admire everything that keeps Portland weird as you party until the house lights come on.

Portland’s Time-Based Art Festival (which everyone simply calls TBA) celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, which means 10 years of bringing challenging, perplexing, satisfying and even exhilarating art to the city. TBA is the city’s best window into the restless, ever-evolving world of the avant-garde, both American and international, especially in the performing arts but also the visual, and from Sept. 6-16 it changes the flavor of the culture here.

Centered again this year at its hub in the old Washington High School on the city’s east side, TBA spreads to performing spaces across the city with multiple events on any given day, from full-scale productions to lectures and workshops. This year’s festival is headlined by performance pioneer Laurie Anderson, but before she performs on the festival’s closing day, lots of other opportunities for puzzlement and inspiration beckon:

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, El Rumor del Incendio

Opening Night – Sept. 6
Washington High School (Southeast Stark and 13th Avenue)

The festival begins with an outdoor performance and video projection spectacle courtesy of New York’s Big Art Group, and the opening of both the festival’s visual arts show and its late-night cabaret, The Works.

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol – Sept. 7-9 and 10-12
Winningstad Theatre (1111 S.W. Broadway) and BodyVox (1201 NW 17th Ave.)

This Mexico City collective, dedicated to fashioning history into performances for the contemporary stage, performs a “documentary play” about the reform movement in Mexico in the ‘60s, then reprises its account of the disappearance of Mexico City’s water resources since the time of the Conquistadors. (more…)

Portland’s weather isn’t always sunny, but we are fortunate to have a handful of tiki bars that serve fruity tropical drinks and help give the illusion that you’ve escaped to a South Pacific island for a quick blast of warmth, even if the effect is only temporary.

Portland has three great tiki establishments to visit. The first, and most widely known, is The Alibi in close-in North Portland. With a neon sign that’s impossible to miss, friendly staff, a full menu, access to MAX light rail, karaoke seven nights a week and, of course, plenty of cocktails, The Alibi will have you longing for the beach in no time.

Thatch Tiki Bar is another gem nestled into a row of businesses on Northeast Broadway. Upon entering you must stop and admire the exceptional water feature before taking a seat at the sunken bar for some of the best mixed drinks around. Plan ahead and you and your friends can grab the VIP table in the back for a private tropical gathering.

Lastly, we have a new — but classic — addition to the lineup: Trader Vic’s. With a great location right in the heart of the Pearl District, tropical paradise is only a short walk away from downtown. We may be a long way from the South Pacific, but Portland’s tiki bars help will get you there in no time.

With our busy lives, it often seems like there’s never enough time to take in many arts and culture offerings. However, I made a pledge this year that I would make the effort to savor all that Portland has to offer with our live music, theater and arts scene.

I recently enjoyed an amazing performance of (I am Still) The Duchess of Malfi at Artists Repertory Theatre. It was amazing how much one night of live performance did for my appetite to see even more!

You have the chance to see live performances too … and for a discount! The Blah-Buster promotion has just begun and runs through March 31. Enjoy two-for-one tickets to many productions around town, as well as dining discounts to create the ultimate evening!

We Portlanders relish our warm summer nights. And now we have a new – legal – option for lounging about on the street with a drink in our hands.

On a one-block stretch of Southwest Ankeny Street between Second and Third avenues in Old Town, picnic tables trump pickup trucks as the cobblestone alley has been closed to traffic for the summer.* White lights twinkle and candles flicker as this most European-feeling slice of the city fills with revelers. (more…)

I’ve got a beer in one hand, science in the other, and I’m in a museum where the only kids are 21 years or older. Such is life at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s monthly After Dark series, where adult beverages and food accompany live music, dance and circus-like performances.

On this last trip my inner nerd was uncaged upon stepping into the temporary exhibit, Game On 2.0,which features a history of video games from the clunky handheld units of the past to state-of-the-art virtual reality. Temporary exhibits and After Dark themes change, but the fun remains constant.

Downtown Portland is a vibrant place that never ceases to surprise — even around 9:45 on a Saturday night in  mid-July, when I happened upon this scene in front of the Nordstrom on Broadway: self-described “street band” All the Apparatus, wrapping up an energetic (and, judging from the assembled crowd of dancers and head-nodders, enthusiastically received) set.

The band — which, according to my colleague Courtney, moves around to two or three downtown street corners on Saturdays — might soon be popping up in a city near you. Check their website for details of their August tour of western states.

Photo: Rich Grant

Our CFO, Ron Melton, passed along an engaging blog post by Rich Grant, a former colleague from Visit Denver who recaps a wide-ranging trip to Oregon and locates the soul of Portland in the “three B’s, which this ‘city of roses’ can claim above any other American urban center: beer, bicycles and bookstores.”

Even the name of Rich’s blog – Walking and Drinking Beer — feels just right for Portland. Which brings to mind two things:

1. Oh, how Rich suffers for his art.

2. Ron: Any way to get him on our payroll?