Last night I attended the Scottish Pub Sing, led by the Portland Revels, at one of my favorite breweries, Lucky Lab in Portland, Oregon. It was beautiful hearing everyone sing songs while we all drank together. We sang love songs, sad songs, and outrageously fun songs about sharing homebrews, making you feel at home, and drinking the city dry. Having a group of people sing together like this reminded me very much of church and just further solidified in my mind that the pub is really a wonderful social center, and good beer is an important element in bringing people together. Lucky Lab is on my list of places that are doing beer and community right. What a wonderful night!

The brewery had a whole load of new specials so I had to try out a few. I ordered the sample tray and had two different Alts, a Scottish Ale, Barleywine, an Amber, an IPA, and a Cascadian Dark Ale (Black IPA).

Here’s the chorus of one of the songs I don’t remember hearing, but I imagine would have been a good one:

OLD DUN COW
There was Brown, up-side-down,
Moppin’ up the whiskey on the floor.
“Booze, booze,” the firemen cried,
As they came knockin’ at the door.
Don’t let ‘em in ’till it’s all mopped up
Somebody shouted, “Macintyre!”
(Everyone shout) MACINTYRE!
And we all got blue blind, paralytic drunk
When the Old Dun Cow caught fire.

I picked up this book at Powell’s yesterday. It’s a signed copy of History by the Glass: Portland’s Past and Present Saloons, Bars, & Taverns by Paul Pintarich. It looks pretty good. There’s about 33 chapters and each is devoted to a drinking spot in Portland’s history. There’s a chapter on Horse Brass, The Alibi, Goose Hollow Inn, Produce Row, and others. The foreword was written by Bud Clark, one of Portland’s past mayors and owner of Goose Hollow, and he talks a little about the creativeness of pub owners since Prohibition. Whether the book will be a fun read or not I have yet to experience, but you may see evidence of the reading here in this blog. I am excited to read it.

I did want to say that it seems like it may be time for someone to do an updated version of this book. There is no mention, outside of Produce Row, of anything the McMenamins brothers have done, which makes me think that this book must have been published before the opening of the Barley Mill Pub. But even the Bagdad Theater and Kennedy School have some great history (before and after it was McMenamins) that could be shared. Afterall, the McMenamin’s fought Oregon legislation and opened Oregon’s first legal brewpub. Also, there’s nothing about Belmont Station, Moon and Sixpence, My Father’s Place, The Basement Pub, Eastburn, the loved/hated Henry’s Tavern and loads of other places. I don’t want to see just a basic overview of what the tavern feels like though, I want a nice history lesson! You know what else I want to know about – The Candlelight on the PSU campus. That place is bumping at night, and not with PSU students…turns out it’s quite the old jazz club and people occasionally show up in zoot suits. So, it sounds to me like a more comprehensive book is in order, although I appreciate this for what it is and when it was made. Maybe there’s one I don’t know about. If someone knows, please tell me.

Did you know that Portland has a mysterious geographical location where gravity is different and paranormal happenings take place? A place where those fascinated with either beer or science fiction or both will find themselves trapped and unarmed? When friends visit Portland the first place I take them is not Forest Park or the top of Big Pink, but rather Portland’s Bermuda Triangle (click for map). It’s a little spot on the east side of town where the hours will pass and you may never leave. At each point in the triangle is a business that feeds off the other points in the triangle, creating a force-field that allows people to enter but only few can leave. In all of Portland, the Triangle is my favorite thing.

What are the businesses in question?
Before I go on I must say that there are a few rules that the Triangle, by existing, naturally oblige us to. The first is that in order to be in the Triangle, you must visit all three points in the Triangle. The other rule is simply that you must walk in the Triangle. If you were to visit each point without stopping, you could walk the whole thing in about 10 minutes. So, what are the points of the triangle?

1. Movie Madness – 4320 SE Belmont

The first stop in the Triangle is Movie Madness, where you will rent some sort of sci-fi or horror flick. Movie Madness is home to the Pacific Northwest’s largest collection of Sci-Fi, Horror, and Cult films. The first thing I would do in the Portland Bermuda Triangle is go into this store, go straight to the back and check out the collection. Their horror videos are arranged in further subcategories, so you can browse by “Rampaging Teenagers” or “Nature’s Revenge” or “Ghosts” or a large number of other topics. The sci-fi collection is right next to the horror collection and it promises to have some rare gems that would surprise you. Don’t see the title you’re looking for? Search the computer because there’s a chance it’s located under a director (they file movies by directors too). You can also browse around and find the “Male-Chauvinist Fantasies” section where you can find things like Beach Babes from Mars (I made that up), or you can look through the Red Scare Collection. On your way out, be sure to check out the collection of costumes and props from all sorts of movies including Alien, Blade Runner, and H.G. Well’s Time Machine (You know the little miniature test-version of the time machine…yeah it’s at Movie Madness!!!). It’s really a wild ride. If you aren’t careful, hours will have passed. You can always come back, but tonight you are on a mission to get lost in the Triangle, so you must move on.

2. Horse Brass Pub – 4520 SE Belmont

A block or two away you will find one of Portland’s most important pubs. Now that you’ve got a movie picked out for later you must come in here for a few drinks. I’m going to take a stab and say that Horse Brass has about 60 beers on tap. There are two menu’s – the guest tap list and the mainstay list. I’d say that about 20-25 of their beers are on the guest tap list and so the likeliness of you drinking a beer from that list again next week is pretty slim. Usually the guest beers last no more than 2 days. They serve 20 oz pints and 10 oz glasses. I usually do 10 oz glasses and I’ll order 2-3 for sampling. Horse Brass is a cozy place that is perfect for hanging out with friends and talking, it’s a real pub. There’s also a few dart boards. The servers are very knowledgeable about their beers and even Portland beer history. The selection here is so nice that it will be difficult to make an easy decision, and you may just have to stay till you’ve sampled everything you feel you might otherwise miss out on. This is why Horse Brass is such an integral part of getting lost in Portland’s Bermuda Triangle. (photo credit to Paul Lowry)

3. Belmont Station – 4520 SE Stark

If you finish up your drinking at Horse Brass before 10pm you need to come here. If you are going to take longer at Horse Brass, you should come here first. Don’t miss Belmont Station, your life depends on it. Belmont Station is going to be about a 5 minute walk from the other locations, but it is this short walk that helps form the perfect triangle in the first place. Belmont Station, the biercafé, is currently home to about 1200 different bottled beers. You will have no easy task ahead of you, picking out a few beers to drink with your movie. And you thought Movie Madness took a long time to make a selection! Beers are arranged mostly by geographical location of brewery. What are you feeling tonight? You feeling like something local? Maybe an IPA to go with your schlocky cult film, or a lager to go with your slow-paced sci-fi drama? Maybe a foreign stout to go with your Scottish foreign film? It’s your choice. Can’t figure it out, ask the staff, they are super knowledgeable and helpful. Attached to the store is a small pub with about 15 uncommon beers on tap. These beers are going to be different from the ones you will find 4 blocks away at Horse Brass so stay for a pint.

By the time you’ve finished your time in the Triangle you will be pretty exhausted. Now it’s time to make your way home (don’t drink and drive), pop in the movie from Movie Madness, and pour yourself a pint from the beer you bought at Belmont Station. Portland’s Bermuda Triangle has made it’s way to your living room. It’ll provide some good leisure, don’t miss out!

I’ve long thought that Portland takes it’s local pub culture very seriously. But not too many people know about Dean’s Scene. Dean is a plumber by day, brewer by night and he has retrofitted his basement to be a microtopia for beer lovers. You can just barely see the neon light from the sidewalk, you have to know where to look, but if it’s on you can walk around back and enter a whole new world. Dean’s Scene is one of Portland’s best beer culture offerings, and most people miss it entirely. So, why is it one of the best places in Portland to drink a beer? It’s a top-secret, underground speakeasy for beer drinkers!

Down in his basement is a complete brewery and bar and it’s available to anyone who wants to come have a drink with Dean and his pals. He offers about four of his own homebrews on tap. You walk in, get yourself a glass and self-serve your beer. He’s constantly brewing new batches and he has a rule that he’ll never brew the same beer twice. He’s made friends with a lot of the brewers in town and he’s obviously a big collector of beer paraphenilia. It’s quite an exciting place to visit. He’s got a bunch of youtube videos where he’s brewing beer and talking politics with his friends here. Here’s a nice image of the brewery with the bar in the background: Here’s the cabinet with all the beer glasses:

It’s a real microbrewery. Sometimes he’ll open up any number of bottles of beer from around the world for you to taste with him. He’s built his own walk in fridge and he’s aging a lot of beer there. One time he opened up a 3 year old bottle of Stone Brewery’s Epic Ale (2006). That was tasty. Another time he opened up a Heater Allan Hefeweisen, a beer I had never seen before. Yesterday I walked in and he had just finished giving tastes of about 7 different beers that I had never had before. Just missed it!

It’s the only bar in Portland you can smoke at. Really though, it’s not licensed, it’s just Dean opening his house to anyone who loves beer. I always give him a little cash to be nice.
UPDATE ***
I had removed the location of Dean’s Scene due to readers concern. Dean and a few regulars have assured me that they don’t mind having the location posted…SO, you can look for Dean’s neon sign on Fremont, just across the street from Alameda Brewery…between NE 47th and 48th.

Additionally, here is another concern from a regular Dean’s Scene attendee: “Just making sure that it is clear, that Dean’s Scene should 1) remain open 2) entrance is through association cannot be done freely and without the presence of the invitee 3) leave a healthy donation reflective of your consumption.”

History Pub is a history lesson series that takes place outside of your typical classroom setting, giving you the opportunity hear “a presentation by a humanities expert from fields including history, journalism, law, and women’s studies” while drinking a pint at Kennedy School, one of the most majestic pubs you’ll ever sit in. Whenever possible, individuals who participated in or were affected by the events share their memories as part of the program. It’s a collaboration between the Holy Names Heritage Center and McMenamins Kennedy School Pub and Brewery.

The History Pub’s next event is about Vanport, Oregon, a makeshift city that was build to house war veterans and was one of only two wartime housing facilities in all of Oregon that would house African-Americans. On May 30, 1948, a massive flood destroyed the city, killing an estimated 20 people and leaving thousands homeless. Donna Sinclair will discuss the city’s “de-facto” segregation and newly discovered information about the flood. Ed Washington and Allen Cummings, former Vanport residents, will share their memories of the flood.

Next event:
May 18th, 7:00pm
Kennedy School Pub – 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR

Picture of Vanport, Oregon in the 1940′s

I know I could get in trouble posting about coffee instead of beer so I promise my beer readers that I won’t post too much about this stuff. But, let’s face it coffee has incredibly complex flavors just as good beer does. The quality of coffee can be judged by it’s aroma, fragrance, body, acidity, flavor, etc. Sound familiar? So, if you don’t enjoy drinking a great beer first thing in the morning, maybe coffee is a good breakfast alternative?

Portlanders love to boast about their Stumptown Coffee. The Stumptown Annex in SE Portland offers free tasting sessions every single day at 11:00am and 3:00pm. They require their employees to go to a tasting session at least once a month so that they can asnwer customers questions about varieties and all the new coffee they get in.

We learned how to smell different aromas at different parts of the tasting process. You have to keep your mouth open when you sniff the coffee so that you have greater oxygen flow.

When the coffee cools down you begin tasting it. You can spit it out or else you might get a caffeine high. You taste it a number times as it cools down because the flavor changes as it reaches room temperature.

One of the beans we got to try was one that they are charging $90.00 per pound retail price. Seems a bit pricey but it was my clear favorite. Apparently it’s a super difficult bean to grow and it only grows in very small pockets of the world. Maybe you’ll get to try this one too if you stop in.

update: photos from the exhibition are below

BUILDING IN THE POST-APOCALYPSE

An exhibition that explores and documents options of community, collaboration, and education through socially engaged practices.

Please see below for details about times, events, and goings-ons.

APRIL 10TH-23RD

MK GALLERY

2000 SW 5th (2nd Floor) Portland, Oregon

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

Go to beerandscifi.com/exhibition for updates.
Some events appear twice because they are in multiple categories…

GALLERY HOURS:
Monday – Thursday 9-5
Saturday April 18th, 12-4

ARTISTS RECEPTION:
Thursday April, 16th
3-6pm – Public Social University event
6-9pm – Exhibition Reception
9-12pm – Sci-Fi Screening: Panic in the Year Zero & The Man From Earth

SCHEDULED ACTIVITIES:
April 13th – Monday – 10pm – Sci-Fi Screening – The Man Who Could Work Miracles
April 16th – Thursday – 3-6pm – Public Social University event
April 16th – Thursday – 6-9pm – Exhibition Reception
April 16th – Thursday – 9-12pm – Sci-Fi Double Feature (see above for titles)

MOVIE SCHEDULE:
Daily movies subject to change:
April 13th – Mon. – playing all day – The Lathe of Heaven
April 13th – Mon. – 10pm screening – The Man Who Could Work Miracles
April 14th – Tues. – playing all day – The Man Who Could Work Miracles
April 15th – Wed. – playing all day – Fantastic Planet
April 16th – Thu. – playing until 3:00 – The Man From Earth
April 16th – Thu. – 9-12pm screening – Panic in the Year Zero & The Man From Earth
April 18th – Sat. – playing 12-4pm – Panic in the Year Zero
April 20th – Mon. – playing all day – The Man From Earth
April 21st – Tues. – playing all day – A Boy and His Dog
April 22nd – Wed. – playing all day – Silent Running
April 23rd – Thurs. – playing all day – The Lathe of Heaven

*****Update: photos from the exhibition are below. Click on thumbnails to see larger images:

The gallery was divided into two spaces. The first was a classroom space where free and alternative educational exercises took place. This is where Public Social University hosted their Apocalypse class.

I led a public exercise called the Morphology Chart. The exercise gets people to place subjective interpretations onto random objects, create meaning where there may have been none.

The second room was the beerandscifi room (inspired by this blog). The room encouraged students at PSU to skip their classes, watch movies, drink beer together, and hang out.

At the opening I paid two of my students to drink beer with their friends at the picnic table in the gallery.

Earlier this evening I went to the Bagdad Theater, drank a Terminator Stout and watched Alien on one of the original film reels. I’ve never seen Alien in such quality. Nor have I seen it with a crowd that is as nerdy about it as I am. You could hear cheers and laughter after scenes such as the one where the alien bursts through the guy’s chest.

The Bagdad is one of many theaters in Portland that charges you $4 to watch a movie and allows you to drink beer during the movie. At this particular theater you can order food and it will be delivered to you while the movie is playing. Unbelievable right? Well, it’s totally true. While there are many theaters like this to visit in Portland, I have written more about this particular theater here.

When I saw that Alien was going to play I knew that I would need to make it to the showing. I rounded up a few friends and made it out to the late night showing. Turns out next week they are showing the movie Tron, and it will be one of the last showings of Tron on the original film reels because now that the movie is being remade, Disney is shelving the archives.

Every now and then I organize beer drinking events for art galleries or art festivals. I would like to tell you about my most recent event, which took place at the Igloo Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

I believe that drinking good beer with someone else inspires great conversation and serves as a catalyst for developing relationships. I find that the conversation will often be centered on great beer and how what you are drinking at the moment compares to some other beer you drank last month. From this connection you can talk about many other things and a relationship can bloom over a pint or two. When I organize events around drinking beer I am mindful that it is a relationship building activity.

Last Sunday, I organized another one of these events, but this one had a few extra elements that added a nice touch to the event. This was part of a larger event series at the Igloo Gallery in Portland. Nearly 30 people showed up. This time, instead of drinking beer with friends, I invited my friends, and the public, to sample beers that I would pour for them. I hand-made serving trays that people could take home with them. The serving trays would hold two sampling glasses at the same time – a gesture I thought was symbolic of relationships between two people. So I paired beers based on who I was talking to, the nature of the conversation, as well as attempting to explore taste pallets.

The best part of the event, for me, was that I had put a large amount of energy and effort into building these serving trays that I was just going to give away for free. In other words, the product of my labor was an object that was designed to cultivate relationships, as opposed to my labor being used by some business to make more money for that business.
I received beer donations from Laurelwood, Deschutes, and Ninkasi and I picked up 10 extra Oregon beers from my favorite beer store, Belmont Station (they carry about 1200 beers). The wood I used from the trays was a black walnut and came from someone who harvests their wood up the Columbia Gorge. Zach, from buildsomethingtogether.com helped me to learn a 3D design program, pick out my wood, and he showed me how to use the tools in the woodshop that I needed. I will soon write more about buildsomethingtogether because it’s a wonderful utopian art project.

Click on the image above to go to the Portland Breweries Google Map that I created.

Portland is known as Beervana and the Microbrew Mecca of the Planet so I thought I’d make a google map of all the various breweries here in the main city region (not suburbs). The map shows breweries only; if it’s a public house or a pub without a brewery, it’s not on the list. I know that eliminates a lot of really great pubs from the list, but we can always create another one with no spared expenses.

First, here is a list of breweries that are about to open, or that don’t list an address for various reasons:
- Solstice Brewing (not open yet)
- Beetje Brewery

A list of breweries:

Alameda Brewhouse
4765 NE Fremont St Portland, OR 97213
503-460-9025

Amnesia Brewing
832 N Beech St Portland, OR 97227
503-281-7708

BJ’s Pizza Grill & Brewery
12105 N Center Ave Portland, OR 97217
503-289-5566

Breakside Brewery
820 Northeast Dekum St. Portland, OR 97211
503-719-6475

Bridgeport Brewing Co
1313 NW Marshall St Portland, OR 97209
503-241-3612

Cascade Brewing (Raccoon Lodge & Brew Pub)
7424 SW Beaverton Hillsdale Portland, OR 97225
503-296-0110

Clinton Street Brewing
2520 SE Clinton St Portland, OR 97202
503-238-5588

Columbia River Brewing Co.
1728 NE 40th Ave Portland, OR 97212
503-943-6157

Deschutes Brewery Portland Public House
210 NW 11th Avenue Portland, OR 97209
503-296-4906

Full Sail Brewery Co Riverplace
307 SW Montgomery St Portland, OR 97201
503-222-5343

Green Dragon Bistro and Brewpub
928 SE 9th Ave Portland, OR 97214
(503) 517-0606

Hair of the Dog Brewing Co
4509 SE 23rd Ave Portland, OR 97202
503-232-6585

Hopworks Urban Brewery
2944 SE Powell Blvd Portland, OR 97202
503-232-HOPS

Laurelwood Public House
5115 NE Sandy Blvd Portland, OR 97213
503-282-0622

Lompoc Fifth Quadrant
3901 N Williams Ave # B Portland, OR 97227
503-288-3996

Lompoc – New Old Lompoc
1616 NW 23rd Ave Portland, OR 97210
503-225-1855

Lucky Labrador Beer Hall
1945 NW Quimby St Portland, OR 97209
Portland, OR 97209

Lucky Lab Brew Pub
915 SE Hawthorne Blvd Portland, OR?
(503) 236-3555?

MacTarnahan’s Tap Room
2730 NW 31ST Ave Portland, OR 97210
503-226-7623

Mash Tun
2204 NE Alberta St # 101 Portland, OR 97211
503-548-4491

McMenamins: Fulton Pub & Brewery
618 SW Nebraska St Portland, OR 97239
503-246-9530

McMenamins Hillsdale Brewery & Public House
1505 SW Sunset Blvd Portland, OR 97239
503-246-3938

McMenamins Oak Hills-Brewpub
14740 NW Cornell Rd # 80 Portland, OR 97229
503-645-0286

McMenamins Ringlers Pub
1332 W Burnside St Portland, OR 97209
503-225-0627

McMenamins Kennedy School
Also a movie theater and hotel
5736 NE 33rd Ave Portland, OR 97211
503-249-3983

Migration Brewing
2828 NE Glisan Ave Portland, OR 97232
503-206-5221

Natian Brewery
1321 NE Couch St. Portland, OR 97232

Old Market Pub & Brewery
6959 SW Multnomah Blvd # 101 Portland, OR 97223
503-244-0450

Philadelphia’s Steaks and Hoagies
6410 SE Milwaukie Ave Portland, OR 97202
503-239-8544?

Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery
206 SW Morrison St Portland, OR 97204
503-796-2739

Tug Boat Brewing
711 SW Ankeny St Portland, OR 97205
503-226-2508

Upright Brewery
240 N. Broadway, Suite 2, Portland, OR 97227
503.735.5337

Widmer Brothers Brewing Co
929 N Russell St Portland, OR 97227
503-281-2437

*Utopian/Dystopian Art Links*
-Apoohcalypse Now – An artist’s movie that appropriates Winnie the Pooh and Apocalypse Now
-Portland’s Public Social University exercises some idyllic free education
-Plus a Portland art show themed around Science Fiction and the future. Sounds fantastic!

*Outer Space Links*
-A meteor crashes into Oregon! I saw one of these meteors. Plus a great video of a meteor in Canada.
-What’s your age on other planets? Go here to find out!!!
-The Day The Earth Stood Still will be broadcast in outerspace so as to avoid an alien invasion. No joke!

*Beer Links*
-Gift ideas for your fellow beer snobs.
-A book – Christmas Beer: The Cheeriest, Tastiest, and Most Unusual Holiday Brews
-Portland’s Belmont Station now carries over 1100 different beers.
-Will Twitter replace the pub?

Portland, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

As far as beer goes, Portland is on top of that. Last night I went to Portland’s Holiday Ale Festival in Pioneer Courthouse Square. The beer at this festival was really really surprising as I’m used to all the dark reds, IPA’s and American ales that brewers release for the Winter. The beers here were mostly Belgian, German, and English inspired dark ales. There was a lot of really intense, complex, and malty stuff floating around. Also, a heavy percentage of the beers have been aged in bourbon or wine barrels. But you know what, it was really a lot of fun and I tried a lot of beer that I never ever would have tried.

I liked this festival more than the Oregon Brewers Festival in the late summer because here the breweries seemed to be doing something quite experimental. There was a lot of great beer and there was some really bad beer, but it was all fun. Some of it you just had to try, no matter what you thought it was going to taste like. Take for example Cascade Brewings Drie Zwarte Pieten (Sang Noir): Exclusive to this festival, this big, full-bodied tart cherry red ale with distinct barrel notes comes from a blend of several barrel aged beers, with portions of the beer aging in Pinot Noir and Whiskey barrels. Fresh Bing Blood cherries were added to some of the beer and refermented in the barrel for three months before being added to the final blend. Sounds crazy right? It was. And many of the beers were equally as wild.

Here’s a list of the beers I had (the descriptions are mostly from the catalog):

Bridgeport Brewing – Raven Mad Imperial Porter
Humongous amounts of Chocolate and Roasted Barley malts. Aged on a blend of Bourbon and wine barrels.

Cascade Brewing Co – Drie Zwarte Pieten (Sang Noir)
I already explained this one above. It’s pretty wild, really puckery if you know what I mean. Check this out: ABV 9.5% and IBU 06.

Full Sail Brewing – Dry Hopped Wassail
Specially brewed for this fest. It’s the normal wassail but after maturation it was “racked onto 2008 crop whole flower Brewwer’s Gold hops.”

Golden Valley Brewery – Oaken Bomb
Made especially for this fest. This is their Tannen Bomb ale aged in oak casks, and dry hopped with Kent Goldings.

Hair of the Dog – Jim 2008
I couldn’t not have Hair of the Dog right? This one was really strange to me. It’s made exclusively for the fest. It’s their normal Adam of the Wood Beer but aged for 4 months in wet Elija Craig bourgon barrels. And that’s combined with the Fred of the Wood Beer, which was aged in new America oak. Also, it was combined with their Blue Dot and Doggie Claws beers. It ALSO has 2003 Samichlaus and 2007 Chimay Grand Reserve. Phew!

Hopworks – Noggin’ Floggin’
This was the first drink I had. It’s a sweet barley wine, and just a precursor to all the sweet beers I would drink later on.  ABV 9.6% and IBU 90.

Laurelwood Brewing – Weihnachtsfest
A dark German lager (dopplebock). It was smooth and full. A solid beer from a solid brewery.

Lompoc Brewing – Brewdolph
Belgian-style strong is brewed with malted barley, wheat, oats, and raw dark honey. Fermented with a Belgian Ardennes yeast strain for a colve-flavored finish.

New Belgium Brewing – Abbey Grand Cru
The first beer ever made by the New Belgium co-founder but with increased malt, hops, and fermentation time.

Ninkasi Brewing – Sleigh’r
They don’t tell me a lot about how it’s brewed. It’s an alt and has a European strong ale feel to it. But I guess that’s expected right. I had a hard time finishing this one.

North Coast Brewing – Old Stock Ale
Brewed with English malts and hops. We’re looking at a 12.5% ABV. My goodness, this beer was very strong and really, incredibly difficult to drink. You can see my face as I drink it in the picture at the bottom of the post. Yikes!

Pelican Brewery – Bad Santa
Black IPA. What? An IPA at this fest? Apparently! But still very malty. Lots of dark flavors, some chocolate and coffee tastes. It was a fun drink.

Sierra Nevada Brewing – Bigfoot Ale
This was an excellent barleywine. Lots of sweet maltiness but really nicely balanced with some bitterness. Some of the hops were dry hopped.

Stone Brewing – Stone Smoked Porter with Vanilla Beans
I have never had a smokier beer. This was insane. The aroma smelled like a cigar box, I’m not kidding. And the taste was also like a cigar shop. It was so smokey it almost felt like it wasn’t even in your mouth. That was strange, but fun.

Three Creeks Brewing – Rudolph’s Imperial Red
11 malts and 4 hop varieties. To counterbalance the sweetness, they added 2.5 pounds of hops per barrel. This beer was the most like what you would normally expect from an Oregon brewery, however the maltiness was definitely there.

Beers I wish I tried:
-Anchor’s Old Foghorn with its top-fermenting yeasts and champagne-like bubbles
-Lagunitas’ Yersinia Pestis Holiday Stout because the description says, “Drinking it will not make you more attractive.”
-Yakima Craft Brewing’s Twin Stag Scottish Ale (Oaked). The description says it’s made specially for this fest and great for “good conversation and long, bold tales.”

At the Maryhill Museum of Art in Washington, near the Oregon border, you can see this wonderful chess set among nearly 100 other chess sets from around the world. I didn’t quite catch it immediately, but if you played this particular set you would need to choose if you were going to be the communists or the capitalists. I don’t remember which country this set was from but it’s obvious that they favored communism; the capitalist pawns are bound in chains.*

Thankfully communism and capitalism, and even socialism, aren’t the only options we have in life. While it may seem that the overarching governmental and economic structures surround us at all times, there are thousands and thousands of examples of people like you and me who are making small but conscious efforts to implement new types of ideals into their world. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here are a few examples of things that I have seen around my neighborhood that embody an economy of generosity. Below are images of three free boxes. Someone has taken old real-estate magazine stands and transformed them into boxes and houses that are meant to bring small bits of enjoyment to you as you walk by. On a given day, you might find free clothes, bottled water, street zines, pens, pencils, cigarettes, or anything else that people decide to leave in them. The one directly below is complete with a garden. These serve to be positive social interventions and they subtly motivate us to think slightly differently about the way the world works (or could work).

I’ve always been curious to know if these free boxes are set up and then left alone, or if someone comes by and cleans them up occasionally. I would hope that the latter is the case. I know that the one directly above is updated and taken care of often. It used to be an entirely different color and one day it disappeared and was soon returned in this new state. This one is actually different than a normal free box. There is usually a pad of paper, and pens and you can draw images and submit them into the slot at the top. Every now and then a zine will appear and all the submissions are published inside. I’ve actually written about this one before here.

A while back this free box had a number of small plastic astronaut toys and I couldn’t resist taking one. Since then I have left a packet of lemon ginger tea for some other lucky person. I like the idea of giving and receiving and thinking about reciprocation. Below is an image of the astronaut; I keep the space cadet in my kitchen on the door frame.

***update***
I originally posted info about the chess set as the capitalists vs. the socialists. I was incorrect. Here is information from Colleen at the Maryhill Museum:
The set Maryhill has is a propaganda set, “Capitalists versus Communists.”
Designed by the sisters Natalia and Yelena Danko for the Lomonosov State
Porcelain Factory in Leningrad in the 1920s, the set has often been
reproduced since. Ours may be a later edition.

One side does represent Soviets — the pieces carry obvious symbols of the
Soviet Regime and are portrayed as upstanding Soviet peasants — virtuous
etc. The other side does represent capitalists — the King is death holding
a human thigh bone; the Queen wonton, etc.

I did something very fun on Thursday. I went to the Bipartisan Cafe and watched the vice-presidential debates alongside about 60 other people. The cafe’s walls are filled with all sorts of US paraphanelia, flags, and a couple big Norman Rockwell posters. The television that showed the debates was surrounded on either side by cardboard cutouts of Barack Obama and John McCain. I’ve always thought the Bipartisan was an interesting place but this event made the place even more attractive.

What I thought was great was that regardless of one’s religious affiliation (or lack thereof) to their political party they could come together and watch the debates together. It was nice that everyone was coming together just to watch something on tv and this simple act was a social action that brought together a local community. I know I know, we’re in Portland and the likeliness of there being a Republican in the cafe that day was slim-to-none. So the event was probably not the most “bi”partisan. Also, a bipartisan system is not really the most democratic system but that isn’t the cafe’s problem…they were trying to create a public space where people with different ideals could come together and do something together…”without precondition.”

Watching football games with friends at a local bar might be a similar action. Yes? No?

Oh hey, if you wanted coffee you had to get yourself either the Biden blend or the Palin blend. I thought that was a fun addition. Hopefully this is my last election post, but I also hope that you see that this wasn’t really an “election post” as much as it was about the construction of a community space.

I’ve been having a great time with my project for Portland’s 2008 Time Based Arts Festival. The project is called “Drinking Beer With Friends And Working” which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s not a performance though so you don’t need to watch, it’s a social piece so you can come talk with me, or just sit down and have some beer. Just go to the pubs listed below at the right times and look for the TBA sign and the orange brochures. It’s really been fun so far and there has been some wonderful conversations about: what is critique?, design, religion, traveling out of the country, the TBA fest, beer, and food challenges among many other things. Here’s some pictures so far.

These images are from Horse Brass, McMenamins Kennedy School, and Laurelwood Brew Pub.

Here is a list of the remaining times:
Sept 8 – Mon – Amnesia Brew Pub (832 N Beech St.) 3:00pm
Sept 9 – Tues – Lompoc Hedge House (3412 SE Division) 3:00pm
Sept 10 – Wed – Lucky Lab (915 SE Hawthorne Blvd.) 3:00pm
Sept 11 – Laurelhurst Theater (2735 E Burnside) Movie – The Fall at 9:35pm
Sept 12 – Fri – Hopworks Brew Pub (2944 SE Powell Blvd.) 9:30pm
Sept 13 – Sat – Green Dragon (928 SE 9th) 9:30pm
Sept 14 – Sun – McMenamins Barley Mill Pub (1629 SE Hawthorne Blvd.) 9:30pm