Gnarly Grey: Back To School

GNARLY GREY
By Rebecca Jacobson

Gnarly Grey (1235 SW Jefferson St., 971-271-7407, gnarlygrey.com) might make you feel like you've gone back to college. Located a couple of blocks from the Portland State University campus, the bar on a recent Tuesday afternoon buzzed with student-aged patrons watching ESPN and working at laptops. Guys wore oversize hoodies and track pants; one girl's white button-down barely skimmed past her black shorts. Owners Johnnie Ozimkowski and Cory Eckberg finished up at PSU last spring, and the bar is tailored to students' tastes and budgets. The pool table is free, you can get mac and cheese for $4, and there's Natural Light on draft along with Oakshire, Occidental and Burnside. With PSU and Timbers paraphernalia and a few James Dean portraits tacked to white walls, Gnarly Grey feels a bit like a dorm room. But, unless things have changed since my school days, few other dorm rooms offer a pancake shot (Crown Royal Maple and Smirnoff Iced Cake Vodka, $6.50) served with a strip of bacon. 

WWeek 2015

Rebecca Jacobson

Rebecca Jacobson

Rebecca Jacobson is a writer from Portland (OK, she was born in Seattle but has been in Oregon since the day after she turned 10) who's also lived in Berlin, Malawi and Rhode Island. While on staff at Willamette Week, she covered theater, film, bikes, drug dealers-turned-barbers and little-known scraps of local history.

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office.

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