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I once lived in a place where happy hour was against the law. It was awful. In a maybe noble effort to avoid after-work drunks on the highway, Illinois banned all by-the-hour booze discounts. The bars of Chicago were ghost towns in summer sun, and desolate holes on winter afternoons. If you drank, you drank with angry bike messengers.
Well, Chicago—you've got good improv and great hot dogs, but your afternoons were tragic. (Illinois just reinstated the freedom of happy hour last year, and there was much rejoicing.)
Happy hour is Portland's sweet spot. We are a day-drunk and cheap-eating town more than any place I've ever lived—a city full of spoiled cheapskates who've gotten used to eating $5 double-stacked burgers doused in brie, $2 cocktail menus at bars that have hired Stephen Malkmus as a DJ or $6.50 world-beating, scratch-made nachos as large as many house pets.
For this Happy Hour Guide, we compiled our list of the 100 food and drink deals we believe will truly make your afternoons and late nights better than anything in an entire state governed by Rod Blagojevich.
Do the pages of Bon Appétit stick together with your tears because you can't eat fine dining on a coffee-shop salary? No problem. Both early and late, our 2015 Restaurant of the Year offers achingly good $4 pâté and $5 Vieux Carré taptails that taste like the beginning of the best Louisiana bender ever. Our 2014 winner throws down $5 mussel plates and transcendent house-infused vodkas at $3 a shot.
Don't give a crap about fancy? You're also covered. For each quadrant of the city, we've listed all the places we could find with beers under $2. Can't get out of work at normal happy-hour times? Well, it's always happy hour somewhere. And we also offers a list of happy-day food-and-beer specials that sometimes put happy hours to shame.
Times are tight, and with Trump looming like the Death Star, we've got plenty of reasons to drink.
Welcome to the 2016 Happy Hour Guide
SW Portland Happy Hours | SE Portland Happy Hours | N/NE Portland Happy Hours | NW Portland Happy Hours
Ridiculously Cheap Deals for Every Day of the Week: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday
32 Places to Get a Beer for Less Than $2
Top 5 Happy Hour Burgers Under $5
Five Cocktails You Can Get For $5 Or Less
Here's Where to Get Happy Hour Deals All Day—From 7-1 AM
Five Ways to do Happy Hour Nachos
Where to Get the Best Happy Hour Oysters
Willamette Week