It’s been really miserable out there, don’t you think? The rain’s a little heavier and colder than usual, and every time the clouds part the temperature drops. SAD looms.

Sitting at home is a lousy way to deal with despondency, but you know what isn’t? An imperial pint of red ale and a few rounds of pinball at a busy tavern. It’s not the booze that helps—that’s just a bonus—it’s the presence of people who are neither your coworkers nor your family and entertainment that is more mentally engaging than reruns of Ace of Cakes. We need the bar to remind us of who we are—not mere workers or consumers but people, with jokes and desires and strong opinions about the Trail Blazers training staff.

So it is with your mental health in mind that this year’s Drink Guide is somewhat less focused on drinking than the social activity it enables. We have, as usual, freshly reviewed the city’s 125 best bars, with special attention to happy hours and entertainment, but also searched out some social activities to alleviate the doldrums. For example, those bars that regularly screen Trail Blazers or Timbers games bear the team logos.

We still heartily endorse drinking, of course, and we’ve created an opportunity to do quite a lot of it: The first person to accurately identify the bars pictured on page 37 will receive gift certificates for every beverage on the cover of Drink Guide.

Finally, for the sake of all our damp friends and neighbors, I’d like to invite you to participate in improving this guide. If you know of a great bar we overlooked, please email me at bwaterhouse@wweek.com. The same goes if you spot an inaccuracy, big or small, and I’ll make the correction online at freshly re-engineered, more-functional wweek.com. Now, I’ve got to get out of here. It’s nearly happy hour.

                                                                                                                                    —Ben Waterhouse

CONTRIBUTORS

EDITOR

Ben Waterhouse

PUBLISHER

Richard H. Meeker

COPY EDITORS

Matt Buckingham, Kat Merck, Peggy Perdue,
Sarah Smith

DRINKERS

Ruth Brown, Stacy Brownhill, Kelly Clarke, Christina Cooke, Leighton Cosseboom, Hannah Feldman, Whitney Hawke, Nigel Jaquiss, Casey Jarman, Matthew Korfhage, AP Kryza, Michael Mannheimer, Kat Merck, Aaron Mesh, Becky Ohlsen, James Pitkin, Matt Singer, Beth Slovic, Chris Stamm, Henry Stern, Ben Waterhouse

ART DIRECTOR

Carolyn Richardson

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Cameron Browne, Christa Connelly, Vivian Johnson

COVER ILLUSTRATION

Kim Scafuro

ILLUSTRATIONS

Kim Scafuro

AD DESIGNERS

Soma Honkanen, Dylan Serkin