Get Less Fashion, More Thrashin’ at Pop Tavern

For a bar explicitly devoted to pop, there’s a sense that this, finally, is a place where history is preserved.

(Henry Cromett)
By Matthew Korfhage

825 N Killingsworth St., 503-206-8483. 2 pm-2:30 am daily. Happy hour 4-7 pm daily: $1 off drafts, $5 No Dice burgers.

Established: February 2016

Pop Tavern is full of kitsch, but no trivia—records on the ceiling, old show posters on the distressed brick of the wall, a vintage store's worth of memorabilia on the rear-bar shelving, and a great old-school $6.50 bar burger. The taps, meanwhile, sport a surprising shit-ton of solid local beer, with off-color choices like sours from Culmination or a citrus-zest IPA from Pfriem. On the picnic-tabled rear smoking patio, someone drunk is somehow always talking about their X-RAY FM show—"I spin a lot of dreampop"—while, ponied up at the bar, there's always somebody reminiscing about the days "before all the hipsters," when the place used to be low-down-dirty-dive bar Duckett's.

(Henry Crommet)

For a bar explicitly devoted to pop, there's a sense that this, finally, is a place where history is preserved. But the bar also expects something back from its patrons, as advertised by a lit-up indoor marquee that faces only toward the people already drinking. LESS FASHION MORE THRASHIN', the sign might entreat the bar's drinkers. Or, in a tone that seems oddly panicked in such a small space: PLEASE HAMMER DON'T HURT 'EM. But the spirit of this place, smack in the dead-center heart of the North Killingsworth Street bar neighborhood, was best encapsulated by the sign flashing out last December: DON'T HASSLE ME, I'M LOCAL, the sign read. 

Bar story: Pop Tavern's owner, Demetri Kassapakis, is the brother of former Bonfire and Charlie Horse owner George Kassapakis—author, in punk band Pan Turismos, of the immortal lyric "Fuck sex, I just wanna make out!" Both are sons of Tony Kassapakis, owner of Tony's Tavern.

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Matthew Korfhage

Matthew Korfhage

Matthew Korfhage has lived in St. Louis, Chicago, Munich and Bordeaux, but comes from Portland, where he makes guides to the city and writes about food, booze and books. He likes the Oxford comma but can't use it in the newspaper.

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