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Portland has long enjoyed an association with the color pink. There’s the fragrant perennial flower that grows so well here and gives the Rose City its nickname. There’s the distinctive doughnut box that for years has helped identify out-of-towners. There’s U.S. Bancorp Tower, aka Big Pink, that looms over Old Town and the Akebono cherry trees that line the waterfront with blossoms each spring.
And from roughly the 1940s to the 1980s, a triangular swath of downtown between Southwest Harvey Milk and West Burnside streets, dubbed the “Pink Triangle,” served as a hub of queer nightlife and culture. Though Northwest 9th Avenue historically marked the triangle’s eastern boundary, a larger scene of queer businesses populated the surrounding area.
Now, a new pink zone nearby is attempting to honor that spirit. The community-led effort aims to revitalize downtown’s flagging economy with plans for a “Pink Light District,” a nightlife and entertainment zone centered on Ankeny Alley and signified with that familiar bubblegum hue—pink streetlights, pink murals, pink curbs.
The Pink Light District isn’t the city’s newest gay enclave; in fact, the businesses on the block aren’t specifically queer-owned or explicitely designed for an LGBTQ audience. But organizers are keen to embrace the area’s history as a queer neighborhood, and plan to show off their work at a block party at this year’s Portland Pride.
The ringleader of the effort is Chris Pink, owner of Can Can Productions, which bought and heavily remodeled the Paris Theatre. Opened in 1890 as a burlesque theater, it’s lived countless lives and now comes full circle. Since the start of the year, it’s run a vibrant program of jukebox cabaret and burlesque.
“The pink was here before I came,” says Pink, whose last name is actually Pink. “It was like an obvious thing. It just made sense.”
Against the headwinds of a localized recession, a group of stakeholders that includes Pink, Mother’s Cafe & Bistro co-owner Rob Sample and Keoni Wachsmuth, owner of Dan & Louis Oyster Bar, are enacting a bold plan to restore Old Town Chinatown as a cultural hub. If they succeed, there’s hope that the Pink Light District becomes a queer-friendly neighborhood that’s part of a larger, vibrant—and growing—scene.
Portland’s gay history is complex, its progressive reputation notwithstanding. According to the work of Washington State University–Vancouver historian Peter Boag, before the Stonewall riots of 1969, West Coast metro areas like Seattle, San Francisco and Tacoma saw frequent violent crackdowns on gay and lesbian spaces. This is thought to have mollified gay rights resistance and led to greater gay and lesbian political consciousness. But in pre-Stonewall Portland, the handful of gay and lesbian bars was largely tolerated, which in Boag’s telling resulted in a more diffuse scene.
This legacy can be seen today as Portland’s LGBTQ community isn’t clustered in one place but spread throughout the city, with landmarks such as CC Slaughters and Darcelle XV Showplace a few blocks north of Ankeny Alley, and notable bars like Escape and Peacock across the river.
But new ideas are brewing within the onetime Pink Triangle, too. On its western edge, Logan Whalen and his business partners plan to soon open a watering hole on Harvey Milk called Camp in the space that was the famed gay bar Scandals for decades.
So will Camp fill Scandals’ historic shoes as a gay bar? Yes and no, says Whalen, who also owns Best Coast Barbershop, across Harvey Milk from the Scandals space.
“It’s a really tough question to answer because you want the allies there. You want it to be a place for everybody,” Whalen says. “But then you get a lot of people who say, ‘Why can’t we just have a gay bar?’”
Whalen moved here in 1995 and came out the following year.
“When Silverado moved down to Southwest 3rd Avenue in 2008, we used to walk a big circle down to CC Slaughters in Old Town and back up to Stark Street,” Whalen says. “So people are not opposed to heading down to Ankeny. And I’d love it if we were somehow connected with all of them. I’d love to make the whole place more vibrant.”
On a recent Monday afternoon, members of the Ankeny Alley Association gathered around an elongated bubinga table at Mother’s to discuss progress with city officials and preparations for the Pink Light District’s upcoming Pride Block Party.
The party will feature DJs, aerialists and a 3-on-3 tournament organized by queer community-run basketball group Ball Out Portland. Two months after the mayor christened the Pink Light District, organizers hope to have some initial pieces in place in time for a Pride kickoff event July 18: overhead lights, painted curb extensions, banners and other way-finding and window wraps in vacant buildings.
Frank Faillace, who owns a number of businesses within the Pink Light District, inlcuding Dante’s and the Kit Kat Club, sees potential in the present moment. On top of grant opportunities available to new business owners, property hasn’t been so cheap in over a decade.
“They are starting to come back. There is more and more going on every day and night. And if you are interested in starting a new business, now is the time to find some great deals,” Faillace says, adding that downtown is cleaner now than he’s seen it in 13 years.
“It’s about getting people downtown. It’s about fixing our reputation. And it’s about light,” says Cooper Hays, entertainer and proprietress of Madam Cooper’s Parlor, in the heart of the Pink Light District. “If there’s more light and more bodies, there’s going to be more perceived safety, and that’s really what we need.”
