New Bar Watch: Dig A Pony Slated to Open July 20

The new watering hole will also feature nightly DJs—there will be a turntable built into the bar and Hall foresees mostly pre-'90s vinyl in rotation—and a budget-priced menu curated by consulting chef Gregory Gourdet of Departure. Hall says Dig A Pony hopes to open on July 20 (they'll be cutting it very close, though, based on the still-unfinished nature of the space), and while live music isn’t slated for DAP this summer, some of Portland’s finest electronic and pop bands (we were told names; we were also asked not to repeat names) are slated to help celebrate the grand opening.

Other tidbits recovered from our walk through: "Everything was covered in 90 years of asbestos tile and carpeting, and a lot of mediocre design decisions from the '70s," Hall says. "So we ripped everything out, but when we did, we exposed these old beams and this original tile floor—probably from 1917 when the place was built. It was originally an old pharmacy called Potter’s Drug Company. So we’re just trying to bring it back to that element. We don’t want to be pigeonholed as sort of a speakeasy, but all of our eyes are drawn to a classic look with dark wood."

As for that Beatles-inspired name, Hall says the primary owners (Hall, Jake Carey and Paige Finley—Finley being the Beatles expert) talked over "about a hundred" names, but Dig A Pony just stuck. "I don't know if people will actually call it that," he says. "They'll probably just say Pony or DAP."