Portland J


Jazz
Friday, January 13
I've gathered that Portland is supposed to be a good jazz town, so I have three clubs on my list of possibilities for tonight. The first is LVuptown. The postcard promotion that I picked up somewhere makes it look like a happening place. The music starts early and I see it's on the other side of downtown, so I'm on the freeway and I know exactly where to get off and yet I breeze right past the exit. The street lighting in Portland is not so great I've found. Another missed exit and all of the sudden, I'm in the lane for I-84 which goes to Salt Lake City. Like previous wrong turns it takes me over the Willamette. I find an exit and cross back and snake my way through downtown to the club.

Inside I see it's full and, shockingly, it's on over-60 crowd. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that one of my stereotypes about Portland is that it is a very young, trendy, hip city. The bar feels like a hotel lounge and then I find out that it used to be a DoubleTree before the university took it over. For a moment I feel like I'm somewhere else, like Omaha maybe. The music would be good but the vocalist and the pianist keep getting their keys crossed up. I find the last open seat, order a beer, and then decide to cut my losses and try the others. This entails driving back home because I know parking is horrible in that neighborhood and it's easier to walk. What I had forgotten for a moment is that parking is terrible in my neighborhood and it takes 10 minutes to find a space three blocks away.

Now this is where, if not for the Portland Project, I would normally have called it a night. But I press on to Bar Mestizo, which is as hip and trendy as a refugee from Minnesota could possibly want, but alas, also packed--uber-crowded. So I turn on my heels and try the last on my jazz card: Jimmy Mak's, which is a proverbial ace-in-the-hole, which is why I saved it for last. Downbeat Magazine lists it in its 100 top places to listen to jazz. In the world! And like the others tonight it's full, but I hang in there and wait for a seat and the bartender brings me chamomile tea with lemon and endless refills of water and berry cobbler with vanilla ice cream. And the music here (Gorden Lee Quartet) is the real deal...sweet and swinging and melt-in-your mouth good (as was the cobbler!)

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All content copyright Tom Mattox, 2006