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The Know, the Alberta Street punk-rock dive bar and concert venue, is closing later this year.
Owner Ryan Stowe confirms the club's final show will take place on Nov. 28 30.
"I honestly can't believe we're closing up shop on Alberta," he says. "So many awesome shows and regulars, but the damn money moved in and they'd rather have a boutique salt shop where we are now than a very real, down-to-earth bar and venue that has meant so much to countless people and bands over the last 12 years."
For 11 years, the Know stood as Portland's premier bastion of noise, filling its calendar with all manner of punk, metal and garage rock. Its floors were sticky with spilled PBR, and the bathrooms would give veterans of CBGB's heyday flashbacks. One such vet, the Modern Lovers' Jonathan Richman, was so enamored of the place when he stopped in before an appearance at the staid Aladdin Theater that he returned twice to play a series of multi-night stands on its shin-high stage.
As the neighborhood grew up around it, the Know has existed as Alberta's lone holdout of dirty Old Portland. When he signed a two-year lease back in 2014, Stowe seemed to recognize the end was coming sooner than later.
"We had an empty lot across the street from us for almost eight years," Stowe told Willamette Week in a piece about Portland bar closures. "Then a bunch of stores went into the Acme Glass building, all these places that had been there for generations. The owners saw dollar signs and sold the building."
Related: "Flashback: Amebix at the Know, May 2009."
Stowe says his landlord recently raised the rent "150 percent," making it impossible to remain in the current location. But he adds that the venue is looking to relocate.
"The yuppies won this round," Stowe says, "but we'll re-open in a better place, away from 'Division St. Northeast.'"
Willamette Week