This Week's Contestants
They're less than a block apart...yet worlds separate
them! Follow, as we explore two colliding realities on West
Burnside!
Look at the grimed facade of Dugo's, dead-center
in a block of boarded windows and whiskey phantoms on Burnside,
and you think: "Hot damn, what a great place to get stabbed
in the back of the neck with the business
end of a broken bottle!"
So you step around the tottering men, the crumpled souls
that the Liberation Collective down the street hasn't freed
from the shackles of gin and desperation, and into Dugo's.
And you find...that's it's a damn congenial place to kill
a beer in the afternoon. That the dark wood bar has a roughshod
grace. That the bartender's a friendly guy who greets an
order for a round of Milwaukee's Beast with
a knowing grin. "Ah, yes. The swill." And you settle at
one of the dark-stained tables, check out the jukebox (Madonna
bad, Roy Orbison good) and bask in the God-given cheapness
of the beer ($1.25 for a glass of what made Milwaukee famous).
The high ceilings lend an unexpectedly generous sense of
space. Your fellow obliterati are, indeed, a ragged lot,
with years of dedication to hop and vine weighing heavily
upon them, but they're content to let you do your drinking
while they do theirs.
And so you have a fine time at Dugo's, pleased that one
of the yeastiest-looking portals on downtown's grease-clogged
jugular leads to a rough 'n' ready good time. And then you
step down half a block west, into the green and gold bling
of The Caribou (which recently reopened with some
signage saying "Doodah's," although the staff still
answers to the megafauna name of the longtime meat market).
And you see what five months of brass-polishing can (and
can't) do for a joint.
There's nothing particularly wrong with the place. In fact,
the old interior, the heavy wooden furniture and the marquee
geography should add up to something dead cool. Somehow,
though, it doesn't happen. As warm, drizzly evening turns
into dark, wet night, nothing much is doing in the blinding
blare. A cheerful young lady ladles suds at fairly reasonable
prices to a small contingent of Old Town aldermen who look
uncomfortably out of place in this terrifyingly bright Cheers
set. Nursing a Bud, you find yourself longing, ever so gently,
for Dugo's. Sweet Dugo's. Like nestling in mother's bosom,
I tell ya. Ah yes. The swill.
THIS WEEK'S
CONTESTANTS:
Dugo's On Burnside
413 W Burnside St.,
241-1022
Caribou (a.k., God knows why, a. Doodah's)
503 W
Burnside St.,
417-8058
COMEDY LISTINGS:
Mark Cortis
Stand-up at PDX's
leading laff shack
Harvey's Comedy Club
436 NW 6th Ave.,
241-0338
8 pm Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday,
8 and 10:30 pm Friday, 6:30, 9 and 11:30 pm Saturday,
June 14-18
$8-$10
ComedySportz
The ha-ha-hacienda!
1936 NW Kearney St., 236-8888
9 pm Friday, 7:30 and 9:30 pm Saturday,
June 16-17
$10, $9 w/ can of food for the Oregon
Food Bank
Lee McKay
The "Outlaw Comic!"
Bradford's Down
Under Inn
2752 NE Hogan Road, Gresham, 274-0019
7:30 pm Friday,June 16
$5
Brainwaves Improv Group
The last show in the improv group'scurrent series.
1516 SW Alder St.,
796-9550
8 pm Tuesday,
June 20
$7
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 10,
2000
|
