Portland’s Central Eastside exemplifies what I love best about living in a city: all the old wood, slanted floors, tin roofs, angles, shadows, and surprises. Always a place where things are made and sold, the Central Eastside is now home to many new enterprises including chocolates, salts, distilleries, and import emporiums. But its after the work day is done that things get truly interesting, with innovative restaurants, electronic music concerts, and other entertainments that are just tantalizingly off the beaten path.
One new discovery is the Portland Night Market. Or at least it’s new to me; apparently it’s been going on for a year. Mash up Last Thursday with Saturday Market and you will get the Night Market. Close to 4 PM (opening time) your only clue to anything special going on is the line forming in front of a cavernous old warehouse. But inside the space is bustling with several rooms of food and craft vendors–distilleries, hot sauce makers, T shirt designers, ceramicists, bakers, jewelers and more. Go upstairs and you will find a pop up speakeasy brought to you by the new Sellwood speakeasy, Bible Club. Speakeasies by definition have an enticing illicit air but Bible Club carries this off better than any other Portland speakeasy I’ve seen, an improvised room with impeccable Prohibition style detail complete with tin ceiling, on the otherwise largely deserted second floor of the warehouse. The bartenders are dressed twenties-style as well, and create craft cocktails with panache, complete with giant ice cubes chopped from an ice block, artfully zested oranges, and artisan maraschino cherries that bear no relationship to the neon red ones in jars. The Old Fashioned they made me was the best I’ve ever had.
Behind the warehouse are more vendors and an appealing array of food carts, including some fantastic looking Korean fried chicken. As evening sets in, live music starts, a diverse and friendly crowd fills the place to bursting, and everything truly gets jumping. This is everything that’s great about Portland.
Portland Night Market is open one weekend per season, from 4-11 PM
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