disappearing dives

If you know Portland, you know it loves its dive bars. I mean, this is the city that revived PBR. We like to drink cheap. But these days the really divey bars – the places you'd hesitate to recommend to out-of-town visitors – are rapidly disappearing. (Anyone remember the Paragon? It came up in conversation the other night. I don't mean the one in the Pearl. I mean the one that had a cage at the front door and a guy who had to buzz you in, the one that smelled like burning plastic inside. "Dive" doesn't really cover it.) 

Anyway. One of the best (worst? cheapest? most enduring?) was Hanigan’s, universally known as the ‘Vern (broken T and A on the "Tavern" sign). It was the kind of place where you could get a pitcher of beer for $4, where your friend's band could definitely play a show, where you’d risk digestive purgatory for the 25-cent tacos even though you would not willingly touch the floor, the tabletop, or anything in the bathroom. 

It was always too bright and smelled terrible. It had a real jukebox (immortalized on a “Best of the Vern” compilation CD). In short, it was perfect. Then it died. 

But the Vern has now risen like a phoenix from a birdbath. Its new owners have already remade a bunch of other bars in town - the Elvis Room, Sandy Hut, Lay Low, Alibi. They have a distinctive but easily replicated style built around relics leftover from doomed Portland bars (such as the great Club 21, which they ran until it was demolished to make room for condos, and whose iconic neon “STEAKS For Your Enjoyment” sign now hangs inside the Vern). Think velvet naked-lady paintings, vintage lamps and kitschy beer signs, red leather booths and low lighting. Add pinball, burgers and Olympia tallboys, and voila: an aesthetically pleasing Portland dive bar whose carpet doesn’t gross anybody out.

But are these reimagined places a little too ... ? If you woke up suddenly inside the new Vern’s back room, you might easily think you were in the Lay Low or the Hut: There will be at least one guy with a big beard and trucker hat at the bar; he’s probably a craft brewer, or he makes bicycles. The jukebox is infinite. The place doesn’t smell. It doesn’t smell! The bathroom is decorated with hologram cat pictures, and the door sticks, but you’re not afraid to go in (for health reasons).

The new Vern is totally fine. By any objective measure, it’s probably better than the old Vern. But it’s hard not to think something was lost in the transition.

(Then again, it was probably something icky.)