The Multnomah Villager

Stopped back into Journeys last night for a late-night beer or two after putting Jr. V to bed. I probably didn’t get up there until about 8:30 or so. I wasn’t expecting many people in the place - although there were a few. Shannon had my corner barstool, owner’s privilege and all, so I holed up in the other corner and skimmed a magazine while downing a beer. Bot the bartender, Patrick and Bob remembered me by name from Friday afternoon, which is impressive considering how many people must have been through there over the weekend, and you know my retiring nature and all.

I did not “out” myself as the Villager, since I’m OK with just being a regular guy while out and about.

There are now several travel guidebooks distributed around the place, I stoked my annual island fever by leafing through the Maui guide, and lamenting the fact that now that Jr. V is in school, we have to take vacations in the summer, along with everyone else. Typically, our favorite Maui season is right about now.

Bob and I traded golf course stories for a while, after I moved over to the bar and fell into conversation and storytelling with the other folks. The late-night Monday vibe at Journeys is right up my alley. If you haven’t stopped in for a beer or wine (or port, yay!) yet, you certainly should pop in for a quickie when you get the chance. It’ll be interesting to see how this place evolves.

So, it turns out that when I said I’d be going up to Journeys LATE on Friday, what I meant what that I’d be getting there right about 5PM. So the weather was so incredible yesterday that all of us at my office decided we pretty much needed to close at 4PM and get out of there. So I found myself home a little before 5. Like any good long-time Oregonian faced with the first warm day of the year (note, this can mean any day above 50 degrees), I popped home and tossed on a pair of shorts, a “Hawaiian” shirt and headed up the hill to Journeys. Yeah, I know I said I’d go up there later - but the family’s plan kept changing up until the last minute so I had to fit a beer in early.

Journeys is small. This makes it the kind of place that is going to encourage you to converse with your fellow bar goers, since it’s certainly an intimate experience and it will get full fast. There’s two rooms - the front room with the bar and seating for 6-8 people at small tables, and then a small back room which is the sort of place I prefer to hang out and hold court. This back room was filled with bright sunlight on this day, and I’ll have to pop back there after dark to see what it feels like at night. This room will eventually be filled with travel guidebooks for the perusal of the guests. I’m looking forward to this. Here’s a crappy camera phone picture of the back room:

I’ll have to pop in with a real camera and take some picks of the main bar which is nice. They have all kinds of foreign coins embedded in the tile surface of the bar (who knew that Aruba had square coins?) and after a few of the other early stoppers-in took off, I relocated from the back to the corner bar-chair, which may become a favorite haunt since it allows for good people-watching, conversation surfing and a birds-eye view of traffic passing by on Capitol. I was talking to Bob, the co-owner about the “lawn chair service” that they had going on yesterday and how it’d be a good idea to install stadium lawn chair seating for the Multnomah Days parade. That’d be a great place from which to watch the parade - we’ll see if he goes through with it - of so, save me a seat!At some point I fell into a conversation with the people next to me, who recently moved to Portland from Denver. She is an ex-dentist and asked me if I lived in the neighborhood. I said yeah, I’ve been here a while, I like it, in fact I write a website focused on this area. At which point the ex-dentist (whose name is Kristin, but I have no idea how she spells it, and I’m somewhat fascinated by the idea of someone being a young ex-dentist, can you tell?) so anyway she exclaims, “You mean you’re The Villager?!” I said yeah, I’m the guy, and Kristin says, “Your website is one of the reasons we moved to this neighborhood!”. Cool!And it gets more amusing than that - since she’s from a little town called Sudbury Mass, which no one has heard of unless they, like me used to hang out at Victory Cigar on Boston Post Road in Sudbury when I was in Boston on such a regular basis that I became a regular there.

And it’s conversational moments like that, that are going to make Journeys a cool place to hang out.

4PM-11PM. Closed Tuesdays.

So we’re starting out the whole Pub Crawl thing by visiting the Lucky Labrador Public House which took over the old Masonic lodge on Capitol Highway just as you come into the Village, some years ago. This location of the Lucky Lab is more of a pizza place that serves beer than a bar, which is just fine, since the Village has several other bars and a good slice of pizza is hard to find. I met up with Brian Russell for a beer and a discussion of blogging and happenings around the Village.

The Lucky Lab is a beer drinkers bar, and a Portland beer drinker’s bar at that. This means a plethora of variety. If that intimidtes you, stick with the IPA, which seems to the “everybeer” these days - the one that everyone can agree on. The Lab serves their own beer, names and descriptions of which can be found at this link.

This forner New Jersey boy is happy with the quality of the pizza at the Lab, although I will leave the more esoteric varieties of pizza to the rest of you. Where I come from, there’s only three kinds of pizza: Cheese, Pepperoni, and slice of the day. The pizza is good and spicy, with excellent crust. Highly recommended from me at least. Here’s a link the the Multnomah location’s menu.

The inside of the Lab echoes and encourages it’s clientele. It’s open and airy, and made for being social. Long tables, high ceilings and bulletin boards festooned with all manner of dog pictures and beer coasters from around the area and the world. Brewpubs are not really “bars” and as such, there’s no dimly lit corners for igniting that new romance. However, the Lab is DEFINITELY the place to be in Multnomah if you’re looking for a place that is full of young outdoorsy “Must Love Dogs” types, and.. oh Hell, there’s no tactful way to put this - it’s usually full of good-looking women. And guys for that matter. Particularly at the outdoor tables when the weather is agreeable. The Lba is the place to be if you like to have a drink with a group of people, or hold court at a table as others come and go.

I should mention that it’s been awhile since I’ve been to the Lab, as a result of being pretty near blacklisted back when Jr. V and his friends were a few years younger, and two or three of our neighbors and we would meet at the Lab and sit upstairs, where the kids would run around like wild people while we attempted to suck down a slice and a beer. One the last of these occasions we were told off somehwat sternly by the staff, and had to beat a quick retreat. The upstairs was closed the other night, whether in anticipation of my return the scene of my crimes, or just because it was a light weekday night I’m not sure. I prefer the upstairs when going there with a group.

So that’s enough for now about the Lab. We’ll be back there again and there’s numerous reviews and writeups of visits to the place scattered about on the Internet so it’s not too hard to find info. All in all, an easy way to start off the Village Pub Crawl series, which will be continuing at irregular intervals until I’ve hit all the current watering holes. The next installment will be about a REAL bar, either the Ship, O’Connor’s or Renners, depending on how the mood hits me. Yes, the Village has a number of establishments in which to order a drink, which was pointed out at an MNA meeting a few months ago, but now that I’m writing these posts I’m intrigued at how different the character of each of the places are.