Being There

On Friday September 12th I found out that I passed the Oregon Bar Exam. Yes. My friend arranged for a pub crawl type dealy for that afternoon and evening, starting in the Pearl district (where I live). She even made a laminated map! That, my friends, is how you celebrate.

We started with some early dinner at Deschutes Brewery’s Portland Pub. It’s a very nice restaurant style pub with large open spaces and cool wooden sculpted artwork lending a real Northwest theme to the former warehouse building. They serve their lunch menu until 5 PM, so if you don’t mind being an early bird you can save a couple bucks. My friend and I split a veggie burger (pretty good, a little fall-aparty) and a caesar salad (average). I’m not a beer person so I just had your standard Mirror Pond Pale Ale, but beer people who don’t know about this famous Oregon brewery (second largest in the state!) should remedy that fact as soon as possible.

Next up: Vault martini bar. Kind of a fancy place, but we walked in with jeans on anyway because hey, $4 martinis at happy hour! Heck yes. If you like fruity drinks, chocolate drinks, Habenero infused vodka…they’ve got it. The bar was populated by young and old professionals alike (at least at 6:30ish on a Friday night). The bartender accidentally made an extra drink so we got a free drink, hooray! My other friend who works for FedEx met up with us still wearing her uniform, which amused me - the Pearl needs to loosen up sometimes, for real. We sucked down some grapefruity drinks and headed off to try the next happy hour.

We walked into Oba’s bar side but unfortunately we’d missed the happy hour prices and $8 margaritas were not palatable at that point in the evening. I can’t recommend this bar enough though if you do happen to catch the happy hour (4-6:30 and after 9 weekdays, like all day Sunday). The food is realllly good and a pretty good deal as well, and the margaritas are bomb.

So we trekked it to Tube because we wanted to go to a nearby arcade afterward. There were only a few people at the bar when we walked in; Revenge of the Nerds was playing on the tv screens and the DJ was blasting some semi weird music, so it took a bit for us to settle in. But we collected a few more friends, and purchased a few more $2 (!) well drinks, and acheived relaxation. Tube is a great place to hipster-watch, and I hear they have some good themed music nights. Plus you guys. $2 well drinks!

We diverted to the fancy Saucebox to grab some more food because some of us drunkies were hungry again. Really good food and specialty drinks, but warning, NOT cheap. You just might need to hop three bars beforehand to muster up the courage to order the $12 coconut drink and $11 sushi. And of course they put us all on one check, added 19% gratuity automatically, and refused to split the check. As the new lawyer I felt obligated to front the rather hefty bill - bring cash if you’re in a group and want to go here.

Finally we meandered over to Ground Kontrol where much DDR and pinball was played. They don’t have covers anymore on Thursday and Friday (they used to have live bands those nights) and there’s a bar inside with cheapish drinks. Whee! They also have Rock Band Tuesdays if you’re into that sort of thing. Personally I think I need to go back and whoop up on that Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine some more (I almost defeated the Kracken dammit!)

Portland is a pretty awesome happy hour town, and the Pearl is no exception if you know where to look and aren’t afraid to wander into Old Town as well. And with that, I raise my glass (of OJ!) to all those who studied for and passed the bar this July, and pour it out for those who just missed joining the expensive attorney’s club.