He was in his mid-50s and still carrying himself with youthful style and energy-an empowered multi-hyphenate: a successful homosexual-Japanese-American-from-East-Bloomington dude made good. Kennedy, Kirihara’s best friend and Saturday-night DJ.Īnd no matter which spot you were at, or which time of day, there was Kirihara himself, behind the bar, wearing a fresh Yankees cap tipped to the side of his head, giggling at something one of his employees had just said. And its dance floor could go as hard as any Madonna remix being spun by J.R. It was first and foremost a space for the LGBTQ community, but its stylish low white leather banquettes were open to anybody who wanted to dress up and hang out.
#PORTLAND GAY BARS DOWNTOWN WINDOWS#
With its big front windows and tasteful little neon sign, Jetset ushered in a totally fresh aspect of the gay experience in the city-it signaled a new spirit of transparency and openness. You only felt assured that there wasn’t a cooler spot to meet friends for an after-work drink.īut the soul of the neighborhood could be found on a weekend night at Jetset, the 1st Street gay bar Kirihara opened in the summer of 2001. Here you could sip a rosé and nibble on a baguette and a cheese plate without feeling the unnecessary pretension that was sometimes served with rosé and baguette and cheese. It was a sunny place, all blond wood and white paint, with coffee and Wi-Fi strong enough to fuel “remote work” before anybody even used the term.Īlso on 3rd Avenue, on the other side of Washington, was Bev’s Wine Bar, opened in ’95, a low-key hang with a loading-dock patio that was a throwback to the neighborhood’s industrial roots.
#PORTLAND GAY BARS DOWNTOWN FULL#
A little dingy and smoky when it opened it in 1991, it really came into its own 20 years later, in the 2010s, by which time it was serving a full café menu-pancakes in the morning, tuna melts in the afternoon-to a clientele that looked younger and cleaner and better-dressed by the day. There was Moose and Sadie’s, the seminal coffee shop on 3rd Avenue North.
But who keeps records on soul? Well, hopefully, they’ll track down some old-timer who held onto their wits long enough to sing about the Golden Age of Peter Kirihara, when Loopers from antiquity could achieve full cultural expression solely by living in each of his three neighborhood joints. How do you find the soul of a neighborhood? Years from now, historians will determine their mileposts for the origins of what we now know as the North Loop-they’ll dutifully research whose idea it was to use an old streetcar line as its marketing handle, note when the first mixed-use condo was built, document when it landed its first real grocery store.