3812
This is a building that has held a number of restaurants and/or trend bars over the years; it's on the south side of SE Hawthorne Blvd at SE 24th Ave. At the time it was a bistro and bar called Township and Range, and I insisted we pull over and lens it because I adored the bold, angular fat script o the sign. It looked good, impressively good.
It was a bar which promoted itself as a 'friendly neighborhood tavern' sort of vibe which even in 2013 in Portland meant hyper-stylized American bar food with painfully local ingredients and prices to match the attitude ... and even then Hawthorne was the kind of place where the patina of gentrification had soaked in to become the organizing principle of the place ... so we never went.
We did look in through the entry glass when it was closed once though. Had this big beautiful wood outline map of the state of Oregon, with the surrounding states picked out in different colors, and inlays representing the Willamette Baseline and Meridian and the Willamette Stone. So at least they knew what townships and ranges were about.
Suffice it currently to say that it met the same fate as most ambitious bars and restaurants and self-styled 'friendly neighborhood spots' in Portland did. It's closed - as in gone out of business - and that was well before any pandemic stared hanging around, so put it all down to Portland's legendary shark-tank of a restaurant culture, where you kill or be killed.
Something else is undoubtedly there, maybe. I guess. Whatevs.
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