Tonight, while in the midst of my bike commute over the Hawthorne bridge, watching the dragon boaters practice and two people in kayaks make their way across the water, I decided to detour to Roots Organic Brewing instead of heading home, on the condition that there be a table in the sun. And there was, so I spent a glorious hour reading The Atlantic on What Makes Us Happy and drinking the Organic red ale, which frankly is a little stanky for my tastes. Then the sun went down, the temperature dropped 10 degrees, and I headed inside unaware of the music show that was of course happening.
Photo: Flickr/Sunburst on the Hawthorne Bridge
Oh, the unexpected weekday bar show. It started out normal enough. A long-haired young guy got up with a guitar, strummed a few chords, and launched into a rendition of No Woman No Cry. Then, he gave a heartwarming intro to a song he’d written about Mt. Hood.
Next, his lady friend joined him on a between-the-knees African style drum. For song number four he went to keyboards, she went to guitar, and their chubby white boy friend, complete with tiny blond dreads, took to the stage. Very seriously, Blond Dread opened a mini moleskin notebook, and proceeded to read/sing a poem about Portland. The chorus went like this, read slowly and earnestly: “Keep it weird. Keep it weird.”
It was all very cute and very Portland (except, you know, the Keep BLANK Weird is something we stole from Austin) and I was two Organic ales in so had a hard time not smiling too much even though this was clearly not tolerable for more than the four songs they had already covered. Then I noticed a sign over the bar announcing that patrons could bring in their cell phones anytime for environmentally responsible recycling, and I had a little Portland love/barf fit.
In Portland fashion I tipped too much and biked away.
Tags: ideas about boozing
gorgeous photo!
and, aw, weird portland. so nauseating! ;-P