You Have Just One Week Left to Sing Sloppy Karaoke at Chopsticks II

The first day at the new Sandy Boulevard Chopsticks will be September 26.

POSTCARDS FROM THE END: David Chow, owner of Chopsticks II. "Every holiday we have from now on is our last holiday," Chow says. "Last Halloween was the last Halloween at Chopsticks." Chopsticks II will close Aug. 31. Chopsticks III will remain open on Northeast Columbia Boulevard.

Sleep well.  Do your voice exercises. Start drinking that lemon juice. The final day of drunken Southeast Burnside karaoke dive Chopsticks II is Saturday, Sept. 19. 

At 2:30 am Sunday morning, the music will stop and Chopsticks' doors will close forever on Burnside. 

But it will open right back up on Sandy Boulevard. Sept. 26 will mark the grand opening of the new Chopsticks location at 3390 Northeast Sandy Blvd. 

Owner David Chow says he's going to have a blowout party as a send-off to the old location, and plans to drop his Pabst prices to $2 for the occasion, which means you'll be plenty lubricated on a dive-bar budget. If you want to get a last song in, we'd recommend showing up pretty damn early. 

Chow wasn't always so happy about the closure, however. When Willamette Week first reported that Chopsticks II would have to shut down, Chow said he was blindsided by the landlord's refusal to renew his lease after almost 20 years.

"I pay every time, no problem,” he told WW later. “They say I’m a good tenant. If you’re a good tenant, you don’t get a good result. I don’t know why, but she must not like me.”

But after the announcement that Chopsticks II would have to close, customers began pouring into the bar to show support for Chow, coming from as far away as Alaska. After his initial disappointment at having to close, the support from old regulars emboldened Chow to start thinking about getting a new place.

“I thought, ‘People don’t care,’” he told WW in December. “But everybody came. From Longview, they come down to buy T-shirts. Last week I have one couple who proposed marriage onstage...People know me. I think, I can’t stop now.” 

After months of scouting, Chow settled on a new location for Chopsticks at Northeast 33rd and Sandy Boulevard. Despite the fact that the previous tenant was a strip club owned by a suspected pimp from Washington, Laurelhurst residents held up Chopsticks' liquor license with a series of meetings mostly revolving around parking and potential noise.

Well, they've come to terms. 

Chow's smiling face is already emblazoned on both the sign and the awning at the new Chopsticks location. He's been there almost every day getting the place ready to open, he says. And he's dispensed with the numbering system he'd used at previous Chopsticks locations. 

"This time, no Chopsticks one, two, three," Chow told Willamette Week in March. "Just Chopsticks."

Oh, and Chow says he's learned his lesson after losing his lease on Chopsticks II. For his new location this time, he bought the whole building.

WWeek 2015