Here we go again, another place, like the strip club Exotica I memorialized, that’s shrouded in mystery to me and yet I feel a sense of loss at the closing of another Portland business. Chopsticks III, How Can Be Lounge, a karaoke club on an industrial boulevard, never seemed like it was in the best location. I wondered about it as I drove by on Columbia Boulevard, never stopping, but always looking to spot cars in the parking lot while imagining what was going on there. It felt lonely, the idea of someone wandering into that karaoke bar in the afternoon for a happy hour priced beverage and the chance to sing to a sparse crowd. It’s hard to tell if happy songs would have sounded more or less joyful in that atmosphere. I’m overlooking the social aspects of karaoke. Groups of cooperative coworkers might have congregated, sung and celebrated. I’ll never know. Unable to satisfy my curiosity, I remain haunted by the realization that I live too much in my imagination.

I heard about the last bash that happened Saturday, March 18th. Rich Reece generously offered to describe his experience closing the place out on that final night. We got sidetracked by Chopsticks III, How Can Be Lounge history. I learned that Chopsticks III opened sometime in the mid-aughts. Rich was familiar with two of the other three locations. There was a crew of “good jocks” that rotated through all the locations. Rich worked the deep recesses of the Average White Band back catalog at the old location on Burnside which is also closed. He joked that Chow opened Chopsticks III on Columbia Boulevard for him personally because he was a North Portland resident. He thought his quitting drinking had something to do with the closing of the business. The spirit of Chopsticks continues on at its 3390 NE Sandy Boulevard location.

Rich got to know the owner of the Chopsticks franchise, David Chow, when he sold advertising for the clubs while working for the Portland Tribune. One great thing I learned about Chow were the origins of his catch phrase. I’m impressed that Chow had his own phrase and he wasn’t afraid to use it. It’s there on the bar’s sign, in his ads and on his website. Rich explained that “how can be,” is a phrase of broken English used by Chow to express feelings of incredulity. Chow also loves to use his image, a close up of his face in his advertising. He has always wanted to be a respected businessman. Rich steered me to his inspiration, car sales tycoon Scott Thomason who used his face in his advertising and has since left Portland under a cloud of controversy.

Outside the lifeless club a week after it’s last night of operation, I was struck by how big the parking lot was. A tall chain link separated the ample parking lot from the neighboring trucking business. In the corner of the outside lobby area, I spotted what should have been the first thing packed up, a decorative “how can be” ash tray with Chinese characters.

While I was taking photos a pick-up truck drove unto the lot and headed behind the defunct bar. I grabbed a few more shots bracing myself for a confrontation. An older man approached. He couldn’t have been nicer, asking what I was up to. I stressed how I had missed the bar’s last night and that I wanted to check the place out. He told me he was the new owner. This surprised me. I assumed the place would be demolished for the parking spaces. He told me he was reopening the building as another bar. Noticing the sign, he wondered out loud why it hadn’t been taken down. I mentioned that I had questioned whether this location was ever suitable for a bar. This led him to explain that his new business was actually a strip club adding something to the effect of “that’s what I’m going after.”

His revelation of being a strip club owner made me comfortable to confess that I was a blogger writing an obituary for the previous business. He seemed bemused by this which gave me the sense that the idea wasn’t strange to him. This made me feel good. We had a nice chat about the Iron City Beer/Pittsburgh T-shirt he was wearing. He’s from Portland but had been to Pittsburgh a couple of times. After that he excused himself to work on getting his club ready.

As he was leaving I asked him the name of his club.

“Desire,” he responded. Then, he walked away.

Most of you are thinking, why is this guy writing about strip clubs and rock clubs? These are the types of places the guy has barely stepped a foot in since he moved to Portland eight years ago. That thought, if we were communicating telepathically, would have me stammering, hemming and hawing for several minutes.  Given time to defend myself, I’d acknowledge the need to mourn the loss of our local cultural institutions. Then I’d offer up what little I may have experienced of these places in tribute.

Foggy Notion

Use the old shoe store photo filter.

What’s not to love about a place that may (or may not) have been named after a Velvet Underground song? I’ll live with many regrets, one being not having tried the pierogis they served there. We came close once on a walking tour of Lombard Street that ended at the bar, where all walking tours of this area  should end.  It wasn’t in the cards that night but I did have time to be critical about the decor. In hindsight I have to admit that the kind of rock club I want to go to should have a picture of Mick Jones and other assorted punk rockers on the wall in a stark black and white mural. It’s good to see Mick represent so how can I complain? Besides there was  a nice high stage, skee ball and Arizona ice tea if you were in need of an alternative to alcohol.  My best memory was standing outside the club waiting to meet up with someone and listening to a beautiful, god awful racket as the noise roared out of the club through the windows. A group of people spilled out of the door and seemed in parts bewildered, amazed and in good humor about the whole thing.

I have no idea what it takes to keep a club going but I know it has to be a challenge. Even a cooking show make over of the bar menu couldn’t save the place. In an area that seems to have 10,000 bands performing on any given night it also seems impossible to compete for people’s entertainment dollars. I was hugely inspired when the Foggy Notion got an exterior paint job with what looked like a row of record albums and bright colors for the trim. They jazzed up the old shoe store they were headquartered in which makes the silence from the closure all the more deafening.

Exotica International Club for Men

   

If Exotica International Club for Men could talk it would say, “rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.” This is what I found out after riding my bike through the glassy sidewalks along Columbia Boulevard to arrive in the empty parking lot. It always looked like a classy place in passing. Then again how much class can a business retain when its nearest neighbor is a Jack in the Box restaurant? I was always attracted to the exterior decor. The dark stone mixes well with the odd shade of blue. I was struck by the attempt at what I’d call tiki-exotic. I was never inspired enough to succumb to the temptations inside that would have led to an inspection of the interior design. Upon further review while visiting the site, I spied a note that stated that Exotica was closed due to repairs and maintenance. It seemed a safe bet to conclude that an empty lot and a for sale sign meant it was shut down for good. It all feels better to be able to report that a repaired and refurbished Exotica International Club for Men will return some day.

Note: Jack in the Box Reflection

Now I can say I come to praise Exotica not to bury it. I used to look over at the club every time I was on my way to pick up take-out. I knew little about what went on there besides an old coworker telling me that some of the Blazers from long ago, well, after 1999, would hang-out there. The truth to that rumor (or fact?) could not be confirmed at press time. If there’s anything that distinguishes this place from other strip clubs it may be the name and other details on the sign. I’ve always had in my head that it seemed upscale, as far as strip clubs go and the loopy font of the basic Lounge sign add to its charm.

It hardly matters at all now that I’m finding that I’m merely mourning the end of an era: Exotica International Club for Men 1999 to 2015. No word on when it’s coming back, but it sure seems likely to spring back to life. Men are waiting.

See a Portland Orbit video report about Exotica: https://youtu.be/FdLE8ljT3L4

 

 

I started thinking about two stores that I never went to that are now closed. One seems like it’s been closed for a couple of years the other ceased operating more recently.  What hit me was this selfish attitude that I thought the stores should have stayed open until I got around to going to them. I’ve lived in the Portland area over seven years which was plenty of time to make a trek to these places that I never made. While the stores intrigued me, they didn’t sell anything I wanted. Still I missed out on getting a feel for the atmosphere of the places and I regret that. They seemed like quirky, Portlandy type establishments from a bygone era that we’re losing.

Fabric World

Fabric World was looking a bit run down for years. Then it was hard to tell if it was open. I saw this store many times driving up Lombard Ave towards St. Johns and I thought it was cool to have an independent fabric store in the area. Towards the end a boarded up window seemed to signal its demise.

I’m not the fabric sort. I do have good memories of my wife, Ronna, and I buzzing around Hancock Fabrics in Alexandria, Va. With a cup of coffee in hand and an over caffeinated brain, fabric and all the various gizmos that go with it take on a whole new meaning. I can tell you that a box of fabric from those days remains in one of our closets so we were never in the market to make acquisitions from Fabric World. The only consolation of missing the Fabric World experience is that now we don’t have bolts of a polyester blends hanging around the house. Marci Macfarlane writes about Fabric World on her blog Sewing With Cupcake (see the link below) which offers a detailed sense of the spirit of the place. Sadly it’s as close as I’ll get to the actual experience of having gone there.

Hollywood Costumers

If I’m remembering right there were painted cartoon pictures on the front window and some Star Wars cardboard cut outs there as well. It’s one of those landmarks for me, something that made me feel good when I saw it. Mostly when I was biking around the intersection of 7th Ave and SE Hawthorne. I could tell there was a whole world inside that store. How could a costume shop not be an interesting and magical place? And yet, I am not a costume renting person. I leave that up to my film maker hero Jeff Dodge. It seems like the type of place where he could rent Civil War costumes. There is a bit of heartache for a lost opportunity. This isn’t like one of those cool things I hear about that I missed out on years before I moved here. I had plenty of chances to wander into the store and get an eyeball full of costumes and associated relics. It feels like a here one day gone the next kind of thing.  It’s sad to go from seeing that store, go from colorful and offbeat front window decorations to a blank and empty store front.

If there’s any lesson it has to be not to put off checking places out. I could probably make a list of other places that I’d like to see but I’ve delayed visiting for various reasons.  I tell myself I don’t have time or offer up other excuses. I’ll be filled with even more regret if I end up noticing another business gone under that I never bothered to visit.

Here’s Marci’s report on Fabric World that is the next best thing to going there which you can no longer do any more. Scroll down to the March 31, 2015 post. Photos too!:

http://sewingwithcupcake.blogspot.com

Check out yelp reviews, many positive to get another sense of the Fabric World experience:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/fabric-world-portland

Many one star Yelp reviews about Hollywood Costumers which have a charm all their own if you’re into that:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/hollywood-costumers-portland

Dalo’s Ethiopian Kitchen, the restaurant anyway, has been gone a while and maybe it should not have been a surprise given the dramatic sweep of new buildings that have been taking over North Williams Ave. From the outside it never looked like much, nondescript and in a building that housed the Oregon Minority Entrepreneurs Association. Inside it was like any Ethiopian restaurant with Ethiopian music, Ethiopian travel posters and a bar towards the back. It was a bit dingy but the food was good. It seemed to be run by an older, bubbly gentleman and his harried son. You never wanted to order off the menu, not after they started the buffet service, because it seemed to take hours to get food. Now time isn’t so bad when you just want to hang out with friends but hours, and yes it’s an exaggeration, when I’m thinking multiple hours it was probably closer to 2 than 3, but there is only so much time that can be spent in a restaurant waiting for food or the check. The buffet on the other hand was easy. There was a sink ten feet away so you could wash your hands, important when you’re eating with them, otherwise you had to grab the key and walk down the hall to a shared bathroom. The buffet was good for eating in or loading up serving savers for carry out. Dalo’s Kitchen made me realize that there are varying ways of preparing Ethiopian food, different items, a variety of dishes with every restaurant providing their unique take on what Ethiopian food can be.

I drive up North Williams sometimes when I pick up carry out from Queen of Sheeba, another Ethiopian restaurant. I’ve lived in Portland long enough to remember when North Williams was more empty lots than condos but I can’t get nostalgic about the old Hostess store. The construction boom was a bit of a shock after years with nothing much going on or going up. A recent ride up Williams on my bike had me spotting 20 or more construction workers on a lunch break. Changes to the area like the addition of New Seasons and other new businesses and restaurants as well as North Williams now having one of the automobile lanes reserved for bikes have made the street more active. It feels like it has the potential to get congested but most of the time I’m passing through.

I miss Dalo’s in it’s old spot. When I saw it had been demolished it was disconcerting but there were buildings going up on all sides so why wouldn’t there be a new big building there too. Dalo’s Kitchen has a food cart in Alberta. The website points out you can “find us next to the New Rose City Cab Co.” The optimist in me has Dalo’s Kitchen becoming a restaurant again and returning to some nicer digs. The Oregon Minority Entrepreneurs Association has a fine new office set up in Hayden Meadows in the Delta Park area so maybe all hope is not lost. In the meantime I have to hit the cart not only for the food but maybe to see if I can find the bubbly old man and his harried son. Anybody know how to get to the New Rose City Cab Company?

Hungry? Check out this link to see pictures of food:
http://www.dalos-kitchen.com

Couldn’t have said it better myself:

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/06/as_north_williams_booms_longti.html