Scenes from a Karaoke Bar
Cheers to the Bear Paw Inn!
A bottle of Bud
An Irish Red
Perhaps a bottle of High Life instead
-Billy Joel ”Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” (Bear Paw’s Version)
The Bear Paw Inn is the Portland bar. A beer goggles-kaleidoscope of every bar theme, refusing to be pinned down. Under the glow of the half-lit neon “O’Brien” marquee out front it reads as an “Irish Pub,” but inside the only green is the wilting carpet floors of a Midwestern dive. The walls are wood paneling like a mountain inn but adorned with license plates from all 50 states, evoking Route 66 nostalgia. The menu’s speciality says “tequila,” except patrons seems to drink Rainer, domestic bottles, or Bear Paw Lager1 (BPL) on draft. If you order food you’re getting a side eye, and thirty minutes later, burnt mozzarella sticks that will burn your tastebuds off for a week if you dare take a bite. The back is home to free pool tables and darts, but you need to pass through the hallway of video lottery machines to get there. The bathroom is covered floor to ceiling in punk bar chicken scratch—sharpie political messages ranging from anti-Trump witticisms, white nationalist nonsense, to T4T love requests. This is timeless Portland.
If the bar that refuses to be defined even has an “inner self,” it comes alive Friday and Saturday nights for karaoke. At nine sharp KJ Craig reminds everyone in the awkwardly shaped front booths and tables to “tip their bartenders.” He then unleashes everything his vintage karaoke machine has to offer.2 Nobody’s there to act out their unlived dreams of stardom. No, it’s unpretentious renditions of “Friends in Low Places” and “When Doves Cry.” It’s a place where the working man/woman/enby can sit in a booth with their friends and sing at least three songs without an endless wait.
The Bear Paw’s the only karaoke bar that could deliver the perfect 31st birthday gift. Two classic Portland white guys took the stage. One with long brown hair in a bandana and tiny wire rim glasses like David Foster Wallace on the mic joined by his friend wearing more normal style glasses, a flannel, and jean shorts. A Caribbean drum beat and windchime rang over the tinny PA system and “Angel (duet) by Shaggy” flashed across the screen. DFW hopped in immediately with the Jamaican patois of Shaggy, “Wah! Wah! Wah! Tell ‘Em!”
“Girl, you’re my angel, you’re my darling angel,” Jorts crooned the Rayvon hook, as if only a brief lead in to his friend doing his best Infinite Island Jest.
“Life is one big party when you’re still young!”
A few BPLs ran through me and I ended up in line at the bathroom.3 After a few minutes without anyone entering or exiting my mind began to wonder what sight I might be in for when it finally became my turn. Just then, someone walked out with his head down. My turn for relief. Though inside every toilet was spoken for. A guy with a DIY boatneck-cut shirt stood peeing at the urinal. The stall next to him, occupied by a man with butt length dreads who went by Knowledge4 for his karaoke rendition of “Don’t Stop Believing.” The man at the urinal looked to be almost done and onto the shake, when Knowledge let out a universally recognizable deep nostril inhale and subsequent sniffles.
“And who’s gonna have your back when it’s all done?”
“Knowledge, I’m real shit,” said the guy at the urinal, giving himself one last shake for good measure. “I’m 503 born-and-bred, none of that 971 bullshit.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your dumbass honkey sets,” said Knowledge, pausing for a second deep inhale he’d lined up on his key. “That gangster shit is fucking gay. Now get in here when you’re done.”
Without pause the man at the urinal spun around in a drunken pirouette, his hand still attached to himself, flaccid and hanging out of his unzipped jeans.
“You’re a queen and so you should be treated”
“Sorry about my dick,” he told me, as if the first man to become conscious of his nudity, walking past me into the stall.
“Man, your dick is out,” Knowledge laughed.
“Sorry about my dick,” he repeated.
“Shit, it’s not the first white thing I’ve seen today,” as Knowledge readied a line to his apparent friend.
Finally, my turn to pee.
“Though you never get the lovin’ that you needed”
After the songs were sung, and the lines were done, my friends could only briefly marvel at the star-power of David Foster Wallace. It was time to pay the tab and wait outside for a smoke before the ride home. But before any Ubers were entered or bikes were mounted David Foster Wallace exited with his singing partner. He pulled out two Maborollo Lights to share with his friend.
“Yeah, I’m set up pretty good. If I don’t fuck this up I’ll have a job lined up for three months,” DFW said.
“I wanna show the nation my appreciation!”
They say if you leave the city of gold you can never find your way back—the Bear Paw will always be on SE Milwaukie and Franklin.5
Cheers to you Bear Paw Inn, cheers to you Portland!
A branded clone of the Astoria mass-produced lager Freight.
That is minus banned tracks like “Teenage Dirtbag.”
The Bear Paw is one of the rare bar bathrooms with a line for men and not women, most likely due to it being too nasty for women to actually pee there.
Names may have been changed to protect identities of anyone (allegedly) doing anything cool or illegal.
Could there be a better place to enter your mid-thirties.