At last!

Venues to rock in: Crystal Ballroom

This weekend I had the pleasure of experiencing one of the music venues in Portland - the Crystal Ballroom. Going to see The Hold Steady gave me a great reason to go to a "landmark" of Portland (okay, okay you got me, I'd see The Hold Steady in a McD's parking lot if I had to). If you took the Bricktown Ballroom in OKC, raised the ceiling 20 feet, doubled the floors space, added an extra flight of stairs, added peculiar wall paintings, and add 90 years of musical and performance history, you would get the Crystal Ballroom. So the only thing the two really have in common is performances and the word "Ballroom" (both capitalized).

The main area was just like the name says, a ballroom. The stage was stuck in a far corner of the ballroom to maximize the viewing angles (just go with it, 'cause I don't know for sure). There were gigantic floor-to-ceiling windows on one wall, which were covered for the concert. At the far end of the ballroom there is a balcony where people can actually sit and watch the show (from 40 yards away!). The only 'crystal' that I saw in the ballroom was on a chandelier. But there were some neat wall paintings with a not quite mardi gras, not quite moulin rouge feel. Oh, and there was a little bit of air conditioning, a definite plus in my book!

For this concert there was a waist high wall running diagonally down through the center of the venue. On one side was the "drinking age side", complete with bar. However, the "sober" side actually had access to the front of the stage (where I ended up for the concert). The only disconcerting thing with the Crystal Ballroom was its floor. There was a lot of give in the floor when people started dancing around. I don't know if this is by design or a sign of the building's age. Whatever the case, I didn't fall through (bonus!).

Because of it's location in downtown Portland, there are few parking places. It is good because you can see the band's tour bus parked in front. However, you will have to walk a few blocks if you drive (I live 10 blocks away, so it was easy for me to get to). Then again, you can take mass transit.

If you are in Portland, and they have a band playing that doesn't offend you, I would recommend going to the Crystal Ballroom. It was a nice venue, with plenty of character.

For a review of The Hold Steady's concert, please click here.

Another weekend, another beer fest!

If I haven't mentioned it before, summertime is definitely the time to come to Portland - sunny skies, not too hot or humid, outdoor activities galore, and indie rock scenes. And if you like beer, plenty of festivals dedicated to the beverage. The festival for this week was the 21st annual Oregon Brewers Festival. How do I describe the Brewers Festival? Well, take the PIB from last week, remove everything except the beer and tokens, and you have the OBF. I was never stressed out at PIB, but the Brewers Festival had its moments.

To start, the venue was much bigger - four blocks of festival in Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park instead of one block. While there were only 72 beers to choose from, each beer was from a different micro-brewery, and they were ALL on tap. Oh, and a sample (4 oz) was only one token ($1), no matter what you picked. There were many more food stands, beer related "outreach" tents, and even a stage for musical acts. There were two massive tents for people to sit under and wait in line for your pour. There was even a misting "drive through" to cool you down! On the downside, there were A LOT of people. It usually took me five minutes to get a sample, but another five to get in/out of the tent to sample my brew. I got there by 1pm and there were already lines. By the time I left at 4pm, people were packed under the tents. So go early!


On a personal note, it was great to be able to sample many beers, however I really didn't find any I would absolutely go back to have again. A lot of the beers seemed to be over-carbonated (possibly not the case if you visited the breweries directly). But, I wasn't compelled to poor any samples out, so I got my money's worth. I am still looking for the "shangri la" of beers (for me).

Oh I forgot about this! There was a kids tent (no kidding) that had no-beer related activities. I ended up in this tent, not because I like kids or I wanted to color, but because of the free samples of Crater Lake Root beer. That was the best "beer" I had this past weekend.

Portland International Beerfest

This weekend Portland was host to the PIB (Portland International Beerfest). This three day event featured 130 different international* beers to sample.

*There were a few beers from Oregon and California, but maybe they were using foreign brewing techniques.



This year's tag-line was, "There will be beer." I couldn't think of a better reason to go, than knowing the beerfest would have beer. Well, other than the fact that it was only a few blocks away from my apartment, in downtown Portland. I went early to take advantage of the "early bird special." But I'm getting ahead of myself. For $20 you gain entry to the PIB, receive a 4 oz glass for sampling the beer, and 10 tickets to "pay" for the beer. Additional tickets were $1 a piece. The early special granted you 5 additional tickets, so you can see why I went early (noon-thirty).


The entire PIB was on one of the smaller city blocks, that's it! A metro area of over a million people and the festival occurred on a postage stamp! I expected huge lines and wall-to-wall people, but it wasn't too bad. There was hardly any wait for the samples, but most of the tables were taken early, so I had to stand and drink most of the time. I don't know what it would be like later in the day, they may hold people at the gates until others leave. Inside there was a row of tents for bottled beer samples and a row of tents for draft beers. There was also a food tent for typical German food (the American carnival style of German food). Let's see, there was also a tent for cigars, one selling bikes, and one to raise money for animals.


Unfortunately, it is not all 'one ticket one beer'. Some of the "better" beers cost 2 or 3 (some even 6) tickets, in other words $2 or $3. There was an Italian beer that had cocoa in it, but I didn't have enough tickets (sad face). In all I sampled 8 beers for the money. I learned that I am not much of a German beer fan, and my favorite beer from the International Beerfest was based in Oregon. Go figure. Still a good experience for the money, and it was a great afternoon to spend 2 hours outside! Plus I was able to get a hot soft pretzel. Score!

Going to the mattresses in Portland

Breaking update to the recent bike post: cars (and their drivers) strike back!

There has been some escalation in the bicycle vs. automobile conflict in Portland. It seems the car mob got mad about one of their own being bike bludgeoned by a member of the cyclist clan. The retaliation came swiftly and ... well ... the motorist picked up a hood ornament in return.

Now for the real story. Apparently when the heat is up and the windows are down, some fair citizens of Portland like to remind their fellow citizens how they should act. And as was the case last week, this instance ended up with the police being called.

The event began with a driver going too fast (at least for one person's liking) in a residential zone. A cyclist, miffed at the driver's speed, decided to yell at the motorist for speeding. So the (ir)rational driver decided his retort would be in the form of DRIVING OVER the biker. This action caused the biker to jump onto the hood of the car, and hold on for at least 5 blocks! When the car finally stopped, the biker rolled off of the car. Needless to say, the driver is now sitting in jail and the biker is ok. You want to know the best part? It was caught on video! It is not the best quality video, but what do you expect from a cell phone? Enjoy the music, too!

Moral of this and the last post: do your criticizing of others from an armored truck if you are yelling at drunk drivers/bikers!

(gashole is an awesome word!)

In Portland, bikes rule...

It is fair to say that Portland is a bike friendly (some may say obsessed) city. There are numerous bike lanes all around the city and surrounding towns. Now, these bike lanes aren't just a sign saying "Bike Route" with barely enough space for a car and a cycle to share the road. No, at times these bike lanes are almost as wide as a lane for cars (and out-of-towners may mistake these as lanes, so watch out!). To prove my point about the bike coverage, please see this link. This shows you one of the bike path maps for just the north downtown area. There are bike lanes, off-street paths, and lower traffic streets. To help bikers at traffic lights, they have added green areas where only bikes can stop. There are even some intersections with a special bike signal. They have event shut down some streets to cars - a bikers only zone. Portland goes all out for bicycles.

The way Portland has gone all out for bicycles has caused some tension between cyclists and their automobile counterparts. I have noticed that most people on bike obey the rules of the road. However, there are a hand full of bikers that feel that all traffic, even pedestrians, must yield to them. A few of the spandex wearing, people powered riders feel they own the road and forget this arithmetic as they blow through intersections: car + bike = car wins.

Just this past week a biker used HIS OWN BIKE as a weapon against a guy driving a car. You can read more about the altercation here. The short of it was the person driving the car was a long time biker and riding advocate. He did not appreciate they way the biker was conducting himself on the road, so the car driver followed him for a few blocks and tried to correct the cyclist. The cyclist, who was allegedly drunk, gave his response in the form of using his bike as a wheeled sledge hammer - he started bashing the bike against the driver's car. At some point the driver got out of the car (you never get out of the car!) and the cyclist started hitting the driver with the bike. When the cops got to the scene, most people were saying the guy in the car was at fault (how could a biker be at fault in Portland)! But the police worked it out.

Please check out this article from The Oregonian about sharing the road in Portland. And if you're in Portland, please watch out for bikes!