Iron Fist

Today we’re going to talk about the Thirsty Lion in downtown Portland, and why it’s a shitty bar and why I’ll never go there again.

I’ve been going out for “guy’s night” happy hour every Friday pretty regularly for some time now, and I try to scout out new locations with half-way decent happy hours for us to go. So I came across the Thirsty Lion, an “Olde Englishe Pubb” styled place built into the old Bar 71 location. They had a decent looking menu posted in the window (I admit I was intrigued by the weird culture-boundary crossing “Corned Beef Tacos”) so we decided to check it out. It turned out to be okay, and we shed no tears about $3 pints of Guiness, but we were vaguely weirded out by the way the waitress kept touching us, especially when she put her hand on my thigh. I know some people are all about having hands near their respective crotches, but for me, having a stranger put her hand that close to my junk was a little unnerving.

I decided to give them a second chance this last Saturday, when Beemer Todd was in town from San Diego and itching for a drink. I arrived to find him seated and working on his first beer, so I grabbed a seat at his table and we started catching up. Fifteen minutes later, exactly zero waiters had come by to see if I needed a drink. “This is bullshit,” I announced, using my ‘This is bullshit’ voice that I save up for announcing that things are currently at a bullshit-status. “How long did you have to sit here before they came to bring you a drink?”

“Dude, I had to go get mine at the bar.”

Not a bad idea. I went to stand by the bar, figuring I’d get served and be right back at the table. Unbeknownst to me, however, I ended up standing in the “Do Not Serve People Standing Here Under Any Circumstances, Nor Make Eye Contact With Them Under Pain of Death” portion of the bar. At least, that’s where I reasoned I must be standing, because even though almost no one else was at the bar, the bartenders buzzed along happily making drinks and pouring pints and completely ignored me. They were still ignoring me when Niels rolled up, and continued their blatant ignoring while the three of us stood around. After ten minutes, I decided this was getting ridiculous. “Fuck this place,” I declared in my rarely-employed ‘Fuck this place’ voice that is used when an establishment, due to shit-poor service or other extrenuating circumstances, is clearly in need of being fucked.

Just as we were turning to walk out, though, the bartender who had been ignoring our very existence for the last quarter of an hour hustled over to our section of the bar. “Hey, can I get you guys something?” Well…I relented, and ordered two pints. I mean, we were already here, and they were trying to make amends with us now, and I can be forgiving of completely awful service if the mood strikes me. “Okay,” she said, “just so you guys know, you’re sitting in a portion of the bar where a server is working, so I’ll let him know and he’ll bring you your drinks.” Then she gave us a small smile, to let us know that she thought we were idiots and that the real reason she had ignored us was because she thought we were morons for trying to get served.

Right. Well, we were standing at the bar because the whole “waiting for the server” thing hadn’t panned out for us in a reasonable time frame.

Anyway, the server brought us our drinks after another five minutes (perhaps to punish us for trying to bypass him when he failed to appear the first time) and that was the last we saw of him. I had to go track him down at the bar to close our bill.

Seriously, fuck the Thirsty Lion. Don’t ever go to that shit hole, and in fact do everything in your power to make sure they go out of business, especially if that includes using a catapault to hurl something through the window at some point.