Portland207

St. Paddy’s is nearly here and the anticipation s palpable.  This town holds its Irish haunts in high regards.  Each is rolling out the green carpet in its own way.  Bull Feeny’s takes the award for the first pint slung of the day.  Kegs and Eggs kick off at 6:00am at Feeny’s.  Corn beef and cabbage will replace the eggs starting at noon.  Ri Ra and Brian Boru open their doors shortly after at 8:00am.  All will be serving traditional Irish fare and will have live music throughout the day and night to celebrate the great snake herder, Saint Patrick.  Even the non-Irish establishments are getting involved.  $3 Deweys is pouring Harp and Smithwicks for $2.75 and the mysterious White Heart is holding some sort of shrouded Irish celebration.  If you wish to escape the fiddles and Irish crooning, The Big Easy is holding its standard Monday night open mic hip-hop night.  Good luck out there.

This Friday, several of Portland’s Irish watering holes are banning together in bout of true Celtic solidarity to support Portland’s bid to be crowned sister city to Bushmills, Ireland.  A well timed drunken parade, as St. Paddy’s Day is a mere 10 days out.  It starts at Bull Feeny’s from 5:30-7:00pm, moves on to Gritty’s from 7:00-8:30, RiRa from 8:30-10:00 and ends at Brian Boru from 10:00-11:30.  A bagpiper will lead the band of jubilant drinkers from bar to bar.  As noted in an earlier post, Portland is up against Beantown and Louisville in this Bushmills Irish Whiskey competition.  Vote for Portland here.

An evening with Ryanhood at the North Star Café (225 Congress Street in the East End).  Friday the 29th at 8:00PM.  This duo currently hails from AZ, but cut their musical teeth in the Boston underground.  Former subway buskers on their way to indie greatness.  Since forming in 2003, Ryan Green and Cameron Hood have been staples of the college touring circuit but their fan base is much broader.  Their quick fingered acoustic sound and witty crowd banter lends itself nicely to the musical tastes of New Englanders.  Their songs are nimble, harmonic and buoyant.  You can’t help by smile after crowd favorites like Back Into Blue and Welcome You Into My Head.  The intimate North Star Café is a perfect venue for Ryan and Hood, who relish interaction with their audiences.  Part coffee shop, part restaurant, part bar, part venue; it is one of the best places for live music in Portland.  Enjoy.

The Portland Harbor Hotel opens up their annual Ice Bar this weekend.  What used to be a month-long installation in the courtyard of this downtown hotel has been condensed into one cold January weekend.  A rare chance to drink like the Swedes.  I can’t claim to have ever bundled up in deerskin gloves and ski gear to attend this rite of Winter, but I have heard from reliable sources that after the first few nights, the Ice Bar was scarcely attended in the past.  Perhaps this is due to the fact that it is poorly advertised and dragged out for a month.  I have the feeling that attaching your face to the vodka ice luge and pounding Shipyards to fight the cold looses its icy luster after a night or two.  It seems the operators of the Harbor Hotel have gotten wise to that fact and given the Ice Bar a life span of 48 hours.  The doors to the courtyard open at 4pm on Friday (1/25).  Free food (from Browne Trading and others), a bit of country music and a few fire pits, which serve at the yang to the Ice Bars yin, will add to the atmosphere.  An Ice carving competition is being held from 9am to noon on Saturday and then the bar opens back up at 4pm.  More info in the To Do section. 

I am not sure why Portland loves the 80's so much (80's night at Bubba's, the Awesome, etc.) but you can't fight it.  I was fortunate enough to spend the last hours of the 2k7 and the first few hours of this cold new year clad in the finest pink tux jacket and piano key tie that I own.  It felt good to ring in the New Year in such style and to be surrounded by similarly dressed individuals.  Thanks to Binga's Winagas and the hosts.  Happy 2008.

Ah, the first snow of the season.  The clean, white precipitation covering the dirt and filth of the city...and all that nonsense.  It was a great first storm and a recent glance out the window tells me that it is still going on.  It is nice living in a city with an efficient and effective snowplow strategy.  They were out there as soon as the first flake it the ground.  Huge double-blade plows and little bobcat plows alike.  Being in Boston during a snow storm was always frustrating, due to the fact that the city would wait until all the snow had fallen from the sky before attending to the smaller streets and sidewalks.  Weary office workers and retail shopkeepers would have to trudge through narrow, but well worn paths down the sidewalks.  Like ants marching in a row. 

Enough snow speak.  A Monday night trip to The Stadium taught me a couple important lessons. 1, They have $4 Miller Lite pitchers on Mondays before 9 or so.   These are not so much pitchers, as they are huge Miller bottles.  The novelty of the huge bottles is almost enough to draw my patronage, but the $4 price tag will keep me coming back for a longtime to come.  2, The pheasant shoot in Big Buck Hunter is by far the hardest part of the game.  Those things are quick.  3, The food is pretty good.  4, it is nothing like Hooters.  I read an article a while back about how the city would not permit the owner of The Stadium open a Hooters franchise, so in defiance, he created a Hooters-like eatery, complete with scantily clad sexy waitresses.  Nope.  They are clad quite normally, and I think our waitress even had braces.