Skip to main content4830 NE 42nd Ave., 287-5800, spareroompdx.com. 7-2:30 am Sunday-Saturday.
The Spare Room—as its name helpfully implies—was once a bowling alley, but has become in the meantime the cavernous clearinghouse for every single old, true, good feeling of the Killingsworth-Fremont district, a repository for the contentedly lost and literary-articulate America that Tom Waits always sang about. Elderly couples on first dates sing country songs or swing gently to weekend live bands; young, gentle bohemes—I kid you not—crochet hats as they wait to sing ironic karaoke accompanied by sloppily ebullient live sax and guitar. Meanwhile, the drinks could blister makeup off a pretty girl's face. Home, here, is classic as vinyl, welcome as yesterday, cheap as a life that doesn't understand vice as sin. Also: $4 meatloaf on Tuesdays, $4 breakfast, $4 lunch. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
What to drink: Jim Beam and Coke all night, every night.
Happy hour: $1.25 domestics and $5 burger and brew, noon-6 pm daily. $2 well drinks 3-6 pm daily.
Entertainment: Two always-empty pool tables, a jukebox shadowed over by karaoke each Monday-Wednesday, live country, R&B and blues on Friday-Saturday, occasional midcentury dancing, Lions bingo Monday, ladies' night Wednesday, unparalleled community.
WWeek 2015